Mistborn Chess Set
This page contains photos of my Mistborn-themed chess set, based off of the first Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson. The Mistborn series currently contains six novels and three shorter stories, and it is part of Sanderson's Cosmere universe. Brandon Sanderson's official introduction to the first book in the series can be found here, along with sample chapters, annotations, deleted scenes, and some official artwork.
Spoiler warning: one could possibly infer significant spoilers for several key points in the trilogy from the album.
You can view the files either through the gallery below or the individual image links just below the gallery. Below that, I have included a discussion of the build and some of the customization involved, followed by copyright and use information. If you're on mobile, the menus are at the bottom of the page.
Gallery
Individual image links
- Mistborn chess cover image
- Mistborn chess board
- White side (Preservation)
- Black side (Ruin)
- Top view of board
- Side view 1
- Side view 2
- Side view 3
- Side view 4
- Plantation relief
- Pits of Hathsin relief
- Kandra Homeland relief
- Well of Ascension relief
- White pieces: pawns
- White pieces: rooks
- White pieces: knights
- White pieces: bishops
- White pieces: king and queen
- Black pieces: pawns
- Black pieces: rooks
- Black pieces: knights
- Black pieces: bishops
- Black pieces: king and queen
- Storage area for pieces
- Lighting controls
- Another view of the entire board
About this build
All of the custom printing was done with waterslide decals, which are cheap and relatively easy to work with. I used over 80 decals for the characters and the 32 allomancy symbols around the edge of the board. If you are interested in making your own custom elements, I recommend starting with waterslide decals, though they do have some limitations. In some of my other builds I've used a custom printing service to directly print on the parts (e.g. Shai in The Emperor's Soul), but that tends to be about $5 per part so I don't recommend that except for cases when decals just won't do.
The Steel Inquisitor eyes were particularly challenging. I found nails of an appropriate color, diameter, and length, then used a large, standing drill press owned by a relative to drill holes all the way through the lego heads at a matching diameter. I had to use air-curing clay, applied internally, to hold the nails in place, since the firing temperature of most clay used for art projects is well above the melting temperature of lego bricks (176o F / 80o C). There is only a little room for clay, so sadly the Inquisitors are not very durable and their eyes tend to fall out. All of the other custom parts used to accessorize the minifigures are from third-party manufacturers; I tend to order from Brickforge and BrickWarriors.
The lighting was done using pre-wired kits from Brickstuff. Despite having a PhD in electrical engineering, I do not know how to solder. The one time I tried, it failed badly. Given that solder can create noxious fumes, I decided to go with pre-made lighting.
There is one error in the build. The luminescent fungus in the Kandra homeland is supposed to be blue. I did look that up before building, but couldn't find a color reference, and did not discover my error until later.
Legal stuff
The artwork on this page is copyright 2017 by Richard Martin. The source material is copyright by Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC (Brandon Sanderson's company).
Feel free to download the images in this gallery and to use them for non-commercial purposes. If you wish to re-post them online, you may do so as long as you give me credit by either citing me (Rick Martin) as the artist, linking to this site, and/or linking to my Facebook page.
I am not affiliated with Brandon Sanderson or Dragonsteel Entertainment in any way. This page is in compliance with Brandon Sanderson's official policy on fan art.