Sunday, March 10, 2013

Barsoomian Chess Set

Amanda Gannon brings us this incredibly detailed recreation of a Jetan travel set from Edgar Rice Burrough's Barsoom. The game, a Martian version of chess, is a major plot point in two books of the series.

I love seeing literary props like this. Movie and videogame props are impressive because the artists obsessively recreate the details of the original in physical form. Items from literature are more interesting. Once you've matched the known features you have to fill in the gaps from your own imagination. Two different people could create equally "accurate" interpretations of the same item with wildly different approaches.







3 comments:

Naamah said...

Waking up to this was pretty much the awesomest thing about this week. Thank you for the feature!

I've since made a second very similar one that I like even better, though I've yet to photograph it.

The origin story is here (no artifact is complete without an origin story!):

http://naamah-darling.livejournal.com/613232.html

Notes on making the thing are here:

http://naamah-darling.livejournal.com/610074.html

Really, really not complicated as far as weathering goes. I used cocoa powder extensively, a trick I read about here. It is quite reddish used alone, and perfect for Barsoomian dust. So, that's especially cool.

CoastConFan said...

I always wanted somebody to make a t-shirt with a Burroughs injoke: "We went to Jasoom and all I got was this lousy t-shirt." Maybe with an image of Earth seen from orbit for the slow crowd.

Naamah said...

I would buy the hell out of that shirt.