Presented by M. Goblin Solis

“Oh hey, thats me!”

Six-Sided Seas Deluxe Wooden Game Board

Step 1 - Procrastinate for 2 months

Step 2 - Write a book

Step 3 - Procrastinate 1 more month

Step 4 - The deadline is when!?

Step 5 - Get to work

The creative process is not always a direct path. It can meander, it can twist and turn to dead ends, and it can turn to steep almost impassible inclines. The path from start to finish is not easy and linear, the quality and skill you put into a craft can feel inspiring when the determination hits you, and it can feel draining when the existential overthinking strikes.

The most important part of the process is continuing forward and not letting any of that stop you from trying to reach your finished product.

Six-Sided Seas is a Solis Game Studio “Treasure-Hunting Pirate Playmate Game!” designed by Kroze Kresky. That's what it says on the back of the tin anyway... I know it as also being a design challenge in construction and modified design.

I am the artist, M. Goblin Solis, who turned the wonderful game of Six-Sided Seas into a three-dimensional premium all-wooden product. When I was tasked with making a premium version of this playmat game, I foolishly considered it a moderate-to-easy task. It’s already a flat game, the art is made, the game components are straight forward, and there are dice that will be o-so cute slotted into layers of wood!

Mistake. I was a fool. I underestimated the time and the challenges that would arise considering the variables I had to work with. I was also wasting away my precious lead time drawing and frolicking through the fields of imagination. One day I woke up and realized what I had done to myself and set to work with the anxiety of the deadline being Gen Con 2026, and I could not miss it.

Getting to Work

My brief and instruction was:

• Make it premium
• Make three
• Make it a circle
• Make it 30 inches in diameter
• Make it so they can all fit on a carry-on lugged and not shatter on the way to the convention.

It starts with design, as many creative things do. Doodles, notes, and ideas. It also starts with learning to play the game, but in my ultimate wisdom, I waited on that and jumped ahead. I do not recommend this step, it was a mistake. I recovered but I would have saved myself some time and prototypes if I had understood all the nuances of the game instead of rushing in with basic knowledge and a Dropbox file full of art assets.

The first design problem to solve was:

Engineering

I was tasked with engineering a 30-inch round wooden game board that could collapse for transport and storage. Strong enough to stay together and be played on, easy enough to disassemble. My original ideas were quick and rudimentary

But these strange hieroglyphs would lead to my first engineering prototype!

French fry for scale of course.

There were a few iterations of the engineering prototype. Problem after problem regarding how the “Pizza slices” and the “Crust edges” would attach to one another. After about 4.5 different versions and many hours I finally reached an acceptable solution. The one that was implemented on the final product.

Engineering completed, the next design problem to solve:

Asset Design

The assets are already created, I had all the JNG, PNGS and PSD files I could need! Wonderful, I was hydrated, I was nourished, I set about laying out the structure and size for the new shape of the board. Considering where the seam lines would be was crucial to not cutting any large assets in half.

Okay! Layout done, it took time, getting the shape how I liked it, the spacing, making sure to curt as few assest in half as possible. YES! So ready to get this into Lightburn and start setting up the files for the real work horse of this project: HYDRA.

“Oh Hydra dear, what do your big googlie eyes see?”

“Feed me your lumber so I may pollute the earth with smoke and FIRE”

“Thanks Hydra! Love you!”

New Design problem:

Feed the Hydra Turn the Design into Usable Files for Laser Cutting Software

And this I underestimated because it took me…. A very long time. Be it my own inexperience or my own lack of knowledge and foresight. I realized only after I had begun this task I could not use the assets from the game as they were. Almost everything had to be converted to a vector file, or a vector file had to be created in addition to make the design work.

Others more skilled in such things may laugh at such a task, I struggled. I spent more time than I wanted on this, and it was unfortunate because I needed that time to actually set up the laser files properly. Once the vector files were completed, I imported them into Lightburn (the laser cutting softwear), I adjusted the settings and intensities of the laser for each asset. I separated the files into different segments for the board, and there they are! All the files needed to get started on the actual physical construction! And if you see any misspelled things or questionable words in those file names…walk away. You saw nothing.

Alriiight finally, the work can really begin. Time to test drive these files and start burning stuff.

Next design problem:

How Much Laser is Too Much Laser?

Send these files to Hydra (the laser cutter) and then test the time and intensity of all the pieces. You may consider that the easy part. It is not: it is time consuming; it is testing and wasting material to test; it is failure after failure to dial in just the right about of burn and depth you need. Again, maybe it is my own lack of experience or lack of foresight but not all settings are always the same. So many variables affect the depth and cut of the burn, even things like how warped or bowed a piece of ply is. This and the actual cutting and burning still takes time. At times, something could take 30 minutes to an hour, only to not be what I wanted, and it would have to be tossed, settings adjusted and redone.

I did my best to keep these undesirables at minimum, but it happens. I accepted it, and I always do my best to reuse the scraps for additional testing or something else.

Alright we got our settings down. Everything looks great. I like the burn depth, we have a plan, let's GOOOOOOOO to the next design problem.

Cutting Logistics and Prep

Team work!

Time to cut these assets for real. I set up Hydra with plenty of water and ventilation. Hydra got to work and so did I. Together we had to create all the assets and prep them for the next step of construction. Hydra cut and etched while I sanded, stained, and spray-painted them the colors they needed to be. (The stain itself was a process of trial and error, but that had more to do with color selection than difficulty of use.)

DAYS it took days. Hydra can only run so long, I can only work so tirelessly before I need to eat or sleep (unfortunately). We worked and worked, and there were some issues along the way. Some ‘oopsies’ some errors, some unusable cuts, but together we finally made it. And would you look at that we still have one week before OH NO.

A week until the deadline and I still had the next design problem ahead

Construction

Also seems easy, just glue it together! No problem, breezy easy get back to work pleasey. I underestimated the need for clamps… the dry time… the layers and the order in which they needed to be done…I learned a lot about scope and to always remember NEVER to underestimate it.

The week I spent gluing and constructing the board into its finished product was not so much laborious as it was anxiety inducing. It was easy to be careful with the glue, and clamp everything down just right to keep the tension needed. It was hard to wait for it to dry before moving onto the next step. I only had a week, and the final step of sealing it all off with a clear topcoat needed at least 24 hours to dry before being shoved in a suitcase! So I really had 5.5 days and not 7.

But it's not all that dramatic... it was enough time, and on the dawn of the final day, I top coated the entire thing and let it do its drying business.

Final Design Problem:

Oh no wait I’m done. It was done, and it was wrapped and taken off to Gen Con 2026 where maybe you got a chance to see it and play a game of Six-Sided Seas!!

Hope you did, and if you didn’t well… I won’t take it personally but you should try the game. It's a lot of fun. I eventually did learn the rules and now I have a not-so-premium but regular copy of it on my kitchen table. Check it out if you like here. 

And if you don’t like it, you can check me out… M. Goblin Solis on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/solisgoblin/

Don't forget to keep on smiling (o˘◡˘o)

-M.G.Solis