Making a pawn that can actually turn into a queen | Blender 4.0

Polyfjord creates a Transformers-style chess piece animation.

I bet you’ve seen many tutorials on modeling chess pieces by now. But this tutorial by Polyfjord takes a different approach: he wants to animate the ‘promotion’ of a pawn into a queen. And not in the easy way where you just stretch and morph the two shapes, but in a much more mechanical approach.

He takes inspiration from different sources, like a ‘Fletcher Capstan Table’ which expands by inserting hidden parts, and by Apex Legends. It’s interesting how seemingly totally unrelated sources can provide the creative spark that you need!