I’ve been reading blenderartists.org for a while but this is my first post. I’m new to Blender but I love playing with it when I can get the time. I gather that making a chess set is a noob rite of passage or something, but I’ve been trying to accurately reproduce an actual set I have in order to work on my modeling skills. I admit the pawn was easy, but the other pieces took some different techniques to do their tops. Here’s what I have so far.
Welcome to the forum! Looks good to me, but you might want to give it a bit of texture and a nice background. Good work
Thanks for the feedback guys. I’m working on the bishop next. Like the others, I got the basic shape by tracing the profile and spinning, but my bishop has a nice indented section in the head. I’m going to have to rework the geomotry to get this to come out right. Wish me luck!
got an idea of how you can go about doing the bish there…
make sure that the middle of the indent is on the z axis line… and use the mirror modifier. then make the outline for the dent, and then you can perhaps extrude, or move the faces back inside… this may or may not work… so sorry if no luck… thought i would try and help… post how u do it up if a diffo way works…
Success. I basically did it the way you suggested unrealbeing , but I had to rotate as I went so that as I was tracing the indent I was also following the contour of the piece. Then I had some cleanup. This was definitely the hardest of the pieces for me so far. (I know, nothing compared to some of the great work elsewhere on this forum – but I’m learning!)
Now the only piece I have left to do is the knight. This should be even more challenging.
For the knight, Try filling and extruding the curve instead of spinning it.
I worked on the knight off and on for a while. Spent way too much time on it I’m sure, but learned a lot. Finally got something that I’m (reasonably) happy with.
I guess now that I have a complete set I can make a scene. 
Wow, that’s a lot better than the knight I had the patience to make when I made my chess set. Nice job so far.
Now we just need a board, which really decides whether the scene looks good or bad. Spare nothing on the board, it’s the biggest object in the scene.
