I decided I wanted to come up with another game design to give my kids for Christmas, since they all liked my Mastermind design so much. After browsing around a bit I randomly settled on Seega, which is an ancient Egyptian board game.
Instead of racks and pinions I decided on simple drawers this time, with the board on top. I wanted to decorate it semi-authentically, but since I don’t know any ancient Egyptians I had to rely on Google to tell me what sorts of things they liked. I picked some colors and a couple of motifs, and probably violated all sorts of ancient Egyptian design rules, but I gave it my best shot.
I have 3 kids, so I used maple, walnut, and cherry ply. There’s some of each in all of them. I used gel pens for the colors, which was kind of an experiment (if it doesn’t work out, they all know where to find me to have them redone!) and finished them with spray lacquer.
After getting them all built I didn’t have any energy left for typing up instructions, so I just made tags with a QR code to take them to the website where I found it. And of course I had to use an ancient Egyptian font for the name of the game.
I’ve got some alcohol paint markers on order now, because I actually had a lot of fun doing the coloring, and I think they’ll probably work better for this sort of thing.
I was going to put hieroglyphs on it, but what if it said something bad?
Which reminds me of a story…
When my oldest was 3 I found him sitting at the table one day with a piece of lined notebook paper, laboriously filling each line with markings. I asked what he was doing, and he said he was writing a letter to his friend at the base we had just moved from. I said, “Oh, that’s nice, what does it say?” He gave me a look that I would become very familiar with later during his teenage years, and said, “I don’t know, I can’t read!”
Papyrus is one of those typefaces that is easy (and fun) to hate on it because it is so overused and abused. (Compliments for your restraint.) There is a whole community of designers and art directors sharing the passion along with Comic Sans and Trajan.
This is gorgeous! As as a past student of anything ancient Egyptian, I think you captured the spirit and essence of Egyptian design quite nicely. I ‘get it’. I’ve become a big fan of hand coloring stuff, too…it’s rather therapeutic. What a beautiful looking game!
Haha! You’ll notice there are no half inch deer in any of the projects I’ve posted… It’s all about knowing your limitations and focusing on the things you know you CAN do!
I will admit to having experienced a moment of extreme satisfaction when I realized this project I’d spent weeks laboring over had actually resulted in the perfect opportunity to make you look at a photo of Papyrus.
I actually really like it, except for the uneven edges. I find the shapes of the letters themselves very appealing. I guess I just have common tastes.
I still want to do a Monopoly set – it’s been nagging at me ever since I got the GF, but I haven’t felt ready to tackle it yet!
Haha, I had the same thought! But then, coral snakes are beautiful, so it told me I was on the right track.
Oh, yay, that’s so good to hear! And yes, the coloring is really a lot of fun – I had been missing my nightly coloring wind-down, since finishing the colored vase I did. The gel pens worked a lot better on the draftboard, though. I’m hoping the markers I ordered will be a better solution for future wood and plywood projects.
It’s all about knowing your limitations and focusing on the things you know you CAN do!
