July Art Challenge -- Albertese

[Albertese]

Hi! I was trying to go to sleep Monday night and suddenly it hit me! The theme for this month of "civilian life" is pretty broad. I've been playing a lot of role-playing games of late and somehow I started thinking about how dice might be used in other ways besides the usual way we all know (the value on the top being what's counted). So the two ideas merged and I figured, "ooo... Klingon Dice!" So I found a couple d4's and used some epoxy putty to add in some Klingon characters. I will have to paint them next and take some good pictures of them. So here's my progress tonight, all eight sides have a different character on them...




Also in this pic are all the tools I used to make them.
--Alex

 

[Klaus]

My winner-alarm just went off... awesome!

 

[137th Gebirg]

Yep, I'm liking this one too. Inventive and very believable.

 

[sojourner]

Practical props for the win!

 

[B.J.]

Now you just need to tell us what the heck they say!

 

[Finn]

^I think they are supposed to be numbers.

 

[Venardhi]

Naw, they're clearly Klingon sex game dice. One says Lick/Bite/Cut/Stab and the other lists body parts.

 

[Albertese]

Naw, they're clearly Klingon sex game dice. One says Lick/Bite/Cut/Stab and the other lists body parts.

HA!

Not what I had in mind exactly, but I'm sure there have been pretty creative uses for them...

The letters are just some of the letters I recall from the show. I just checked with the Klingon Language Institute and only seven of them have been assigned values by that hallowed bastion of academia: the winners are gh, q, y, ng, l, w, and r.

I imagine that these dice are used for as many different games as human dice are, but, they are always used as the pair, and each with the same sets of letters. Maybe they also can be used as numbers? I took care to make sure that no matter how the die lands there will be one side whose character is in the proper "up" position, so in that way, there could still be one "on top."

I wonder if maybe the original Klingon letters were based on constellations visible from Qo'noS and the dice were originally used thousands of years ago in some sort of fortune telling or augury or that sort of thing. One will be red and the other yellow, and I posit that these dice always come in those colors and that over the years a green die and a blue die have been added bringing the total letter count to 16, but the red and yellow dice are the ones that all the traditional games use. Maybe similar dice can be found on many different worlds the Klingons have occupied over the centuries and can be found with varying colors and symbols, all of which can trace their origins back to these traditional Klingon dice...

I dunno, just daydreaming...

--Alex

 

[Kaiser]

Cool dice

and you could easily make a lil $ selling them on ebay

 

[sojourner]

^Forget Ebay. Talk to Thinkgeek.com about selling/producing them.

 

[Albertese]

All right, this is it.

I painted the dice red and yellow using craft acrylics. (Actually the red is more of a red-orange, but who's counting? I thought the red was too dark on it's own.) Then I used a sharpie to color in the characters and the edges. Then I rolled them and jangled them a bit to get the edges a slightly worn look. I don't have a real good lighting set-up so I took two pictures, one with a flash and the other without and then composited both images together to get a nice looking light. Then I mocked up a "screen" to make it look like you're looking this up on the Enterprise library computer. I like the results.



Now I just have to e-mail this for a final submission. "Ptrope(at)gmail(dot)com" as I recall? If not let me know...

--Alex

 

[Kaiser]

Awesome Dice

 

[B.J.]

Cool! Now you just have to find an excuse to use these in real life! And yes, you have the email correct.

 

[Tobin_Dax]

Very cool. Do we get to see the other two sides?

A mass of 2 milligrams seems very light. The average six-sided die is probably around 5 grams.

 

[Albertese]

Very cool. Do we get to see the other two sides?

A mass of 2 milligrams seems very light. The average six-sided die is probably around 5 grams.

Sure, I can take a picture of the other sides for you if you want. It'll prove I actually made the other sides, too, and it's not just a trick showing the only sides I really did...

As for the weight, I got that from a website that manufactures dice. Recall that a tetrahedron has a lot less volume than a similarly sized cube. But it seems light to me, too, so I'll take them to work tomorrow and weight them there. At work I have a very accurate scale for measuring gold. I'm willing to bet it'll come out as two grams and the "mg" on the website was a typo. If so, I might still have time to send a reworked version to Ptrope, but I'm usually pretty busy Monday and Tuesday evenings so I might not have the time to correct anything. It may be that it has to be how it is.

--Alex

 

[sojourner]

Unless your sending an actual set of the dice to Ptrope, I don't think you need to worry about the weight.

 

[Albertese]

Very cool. Do we get to see the other two sides?

A mass of 2 milligrams seems very light. The average six-sided die is probably around 5 grams.

Hey, you called it. I measured them and the actual mass is 2.1 grams. I've changed the picture and I'll email the revised one to Ptrope.





And here's the other sides not yet shown. Please excuse the poor photography, I was in a hurry...



--Alex

 

[Kaiser]

Epic Dice