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Animal board game (Full set on bottom of p. 2)
ManonvonSuperock
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Registered User regular
So, there's this game, Dou Shou Qi.
It's a Chinese board game that's in some ways similar to Xiang Qi (often called Chinese Chess), and in some ways, a predecessor to Stratego. Here's the Wikipedia page for those interested.
To sum it up, it has two teams of animals: each consisting of a mouse, cat, dog, wolf, leopard, tiger, lion, and elephant. Each piece has a numerical strength value assigned to it and can only defeat an opponent of a lesser value. The exception being the mouse which can defeat the elephant.
It's a Chinese board game that's in some ways similar to Xiang Qi (often called Chinese Chess), and in some ways, a predecessor to Stratego. Here's the Wikipedia page for those interested.
To sum it up, it has two teams of animals: each consisting of a mouse, cat, dog, wolf, leopard, tiger, lion, and elephant. Each piece has a numerical strength value assigned to it and can only defeat an opponent of a lesser value. The exception being the mouse which can defeat the elephant.
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I'm curious as to what you're doing here though: the pieces are wood and circular...not cards. What exactly do you have in mind for these designs? To be screenprinted onto small round pieces as well? Or are these just illustrations for the various units in the game?
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Here's a pic of what I'm doing with the pieces:
That was the first prototype that I threw together to see how everything would look. The differences in the final version will be that the board will be full color, wrap-a-round graphics; the pieces will be a stiff, laminated, cardstock; and the card stands that hold up the pieces will be colored plastic, blue and orange respectively for each team.
The rectangular borders on the drawings in the OP are not going to be printed, they are just guidelines for the edges of the pieces.
Most traditional sets are wooden discs. There are cheap sets available that have stickers on plastic discs. As long as the piece is visible from both sides, using card stands shouldn't affect the gameplay. In fact, my favorite set comes out of Brazil. It has a cloth, rollout board and cast metal playing pieces. I'd love to have one, but am unable to get one in the states for a reasonable price.
Anyway, so far the mouse card looks nice, but the inking seems a little unpolished, like the ends of your strokes are mostly round ended, perhaps some erasing to thin them out would help? Also that stray inked line on his head near his right eye seems a little out of place.
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As for the inking, I'll probably go back and do some touch ups and taper off some of the blunt ends and remove the line from his forehead. It was left over from eyebrow whiskers that I opted not to keep. I'll post it again when I do.
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There's two versions that are usually sold on ebay.
If interested, here is a free downloadable version for windows. I've been messing around on it for a bit to get a feel for the game.
I needed to choose a breed of dog that in no way could be confused with a wolf. I also thought the miniature schnauzer would make a cool looking vagabondish ronin with his ungroomed beard, tail, and eyebrows.
It's been long enough, that I'm sure there's a few new faces around. If anyone has any feedback on what I've done so far, shoot it this way.
i'm actually wanting to pump this out for the kids in my sunday class.
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I've got a delicate balance here.... I'm making a Chinese boardgame with personified animals in assorted eastern martial arts.
My goal is for it to look "fun and for kids" and not "weeaboo and furry"
I'll draw some more tonight and post some progress.
In regard to your artistic designs, I think the lines could due to be thinned a bit. Especially if you are going to produce the actual pieces in full color. The oriental wardrobe on both units is an obvious choice, but I'm wondering if you might provide a bit more character to them? From what I gathered of the game, each piece is of a numerical value, with the mouse being one and the elephant being eight. You might take this as a representation of their prowess and dress/arm them accordingly? Or perhaps their representative animal is enough? Just a thought.
Other than that, great stuff you've got here, I'm really impressed by the creativity of it all. I wish I had the determination and talent required for projects like this.
It's complex enough to communicate the character of the animal/fighting style, but simple enough fit on a game piece and remain recognizable.
What I would suggest would be to put the images on thick tiles that can be stood up for a partial-knowledge game like Stratego, or all laid flat for the stochastic 'full-knowledge' game of Jungle/Dou Shou Qi.
The final laminated cardstock pieces look a little better than the flimsy ones I have posted. I'll drag them out of the closet sometime and photograph them.
Yeah, unlike Stratego, the rank of each piece is knowledge available to both players. Therefore this game doesn't have the bluffing element of Stratego, but I also think it's targeted towards a younger audience.
I'm using the supplies that I have and am having the kids that I teach each week do these. They're making all the art and everything. I'm doing the printing/constructing for them.
There are five kids and each one will be doing a set.
Here's one of the kid's pieces (12-yr-old girl):
here's another batch (10-yr-old boy):
The first day we were doing these, the kids were giving all of the animals weapons and clothes and stuff which is cool, but after a few, most started drawing them without.
This kid had 5 done with storm trooper helmets and weapons all drawn very simplistically, and I convince him to use a reference book I provided for the leopard (bottom left). After doing it, I had him redo the rest of his with the reference and he stopped putting the guns and stuff in when he did. I like how crazy out of place the leopard's heavy machine gun is because of it.
I think this kid's leopard (bottom left) is my favorite out of all of them. Also he chose to put his cat on what looks to be an armored donkey.
I almost want to take a couple of these and do my own renders based on them. The wolf with the axe and shield is also pretty badass, as is the Polynesian looking tiger with the bone in its nose (and bow on it's head).
They started decorating their boxes last week. Hopefully they'll have enough time to color all of their pieces this upcoming week and then they'll spend a couple of weeks finishing their boxes and a couple of weeks designing their boards.
Of course that would just be an entire set of machine gun leopards
His leopard is pretty crazy, but its his cat and wolf that really entertain me.
these kids are going places.
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Would you say he had....'tude?
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