Real internationalized pieces - Day 1

Hey everyone. While I was thinking of ways to promote shogi today, I came up with a great idea - making real internationalized pieces! I had two options for this: Make them out of paper, or transform one of my shogi sets into an internationalized set. Since I thought it would be rather cool to have (what I believe to be) the first real set featuring Hidetchi's internationalized piece design, I decided to break out the sand paper and start working on my own set.


These are the materials I'm using: 120 sandpaper, wooden shogi pieces, black and red permanent markers, mechanical pencil, and reference sheets for Hidetchi's designs.


Here's what the King General looked like while I was sanding him. It was quite sad to look at a shogi piece like this, but it made me feel better when I thought about what it would look like when it was done.


With the kanji completely erased, I drew a light pencil drawing of the King General on the piece...


...Then I outlined that drawing in permanent marker, and erased the stray pencil marks.


And then I wrote Hidetchi's name on the bottom of the King General, to credit him for the design. You can see the Jeweled General mid-sanding in this picture.


These are the pieces I have finished at the end of day 1: King General, Jeweled General, two Rooks, two Bishops, and one Gold General. It's much more work than I was expecting! But it'll be worth it.

By the way, here's a picture of the Dragon and the Horse:




I wish I had made the Horses a little better. They aren't centered enough. They were hard to draw! But I think it turned out okay.