Real Life Omok Set

Privateer's Real Life Omok Build​

Hello friends!
This exact same post has been posted on another forum, but I don't want to limit the audience of this since it is maplestory related The complete build will contain many pictures so beware when you open them! The real life omok set is an original idea thought out by me. I rarely do any arts and crafts but once in a while, I have (what I consider at least) a pretty spiffy idea for something to make, and this time it is an omok set! I will guide you through my personal process and thoughts of what I was planned to do, what I did, and what can be improved in the future if anyone else wants to take this idea and make one for themselves. Keep in mind that there quite an amount of materials and there are many different ways of going about how to build this depending on what is available to you. I got all of my materials from Michaels, but you can be creative of where you find these things. This whole project has been very time consuming and takes many hours to complete. Without further ado because this has been a really long introduction, here is it:

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Materials:

• 
  
  • 12" x 12" wooden board
  • a bunch of green beads
  • black and yellow oil based markers
  • tacky glue
  • sandpaper (60 and 150 grit)
  • black yarn
  • orange oven clay
  • box with lid
  • at least 225 wooden beads (20 mm)
  • green spray paint
  • acrylic clear coat spray

Spoiler: Materials

Spoiler: Materials pt. 2

Step 1: Sanding

An omok table is a 15 x 15 playing field. That is 225 omok pieces I have to make at least, so I started to sand down the wooden balls. I laid some newspapers over my desk (which was where I was sanding) because I knew the sawdust would go everywhere so trying to at least gather the saw dust in a general area helped with the cleanliness. I used two types of sandpaper, a 60 grit and 150 grit. As the numbers go higher, you get finer and finer grits for sanding. When I sanded one end of the wooden beads, I started with the 60 grit to get a flat surface. Then I used the 150 grit to polish the end so that it doesn't look as rough.

Spoiler: Sanding

Spoiler: Sanded vs Non-Sanded end

Step 2: Marking the Board

The next thing I did was start to measure and pencil/marker in the omok board. Since omok pieces are placed at the intersections of the lines, I needed to draw 15 evenly spaced lines. I measured out the lines and outlined them in pencil before I permanently drew over them with my black oil-based markers. I used a 12" ruler to draw the lines to keep it completely straight. The 1st attempt on the board, the markers were pretty bad and were leaky at times. There was a huge pool of black oil on it so I went back to the store to get a new set of markers (Sharpie brand delivered).

A close up shop reveals that the markers will bleed a little when you are using it against the grain of the wood. It unfortunately seems unavoidable because the wood soaks up the oil and it would just bleed a little like that. It's not a big deal by any means, so I let it be.

Spoiler: Penciling in the lines

Spoiler: Marker sucks :(

Spoiler: Slight bleeding in wood

Spoiler: Final board, 2nd attempt

Step 3: Finishing the Board

I wanted to touch up the board by first sanding the edges of the board so it's not that rough and then spraying a few layers of acrylic over it. I used the 150 grit sandpaper to sand the top corners and a little bit of the edge to take off some of the bite while handling the board.

After sanding, I wiped down the board from the excess sand. If you want to be extra careful, you can use a compressed air spray can to get rid of all the sawdust on it from sanding. I laid down some old mattress bedding in my garage so that when I spray my acrylic, it won't ruin anything else. When I was doing the spraying, I wore a mask so I won't breathe in the fumes. Simply sprayed a layer of acrylic over the top of the board and let it dry for 15 minutes. I wanted more layers on it so I sprayed 4 layers of acrylic over the board. I tried to keep the spraying as even as possible.

Improvement: I was surprised at how ineffective the spray was for the board. I think it did lay down some layers of acrylic on the board, but it was barely noticeable. My goal was to have a decent layer of gloss over it so it would have a smooth and clear finish over it. My initial plan was to paint the top over with polyurethane which would give it a nice gloss. This option was too expensive for me and had more room for error if done incorrectly so I used the much easier to use acrylic spray can.

Spoiler: Sanding the edges of the board

Spoiler: Spraying acrylic on the board

Spoiler: Me + Mask

Step 4: Spraying the Wooden Beads

All the wooden beads have been sanded down so I got 1/2 of the wooden beads and started to spray them. I also did this in the garage and wore a mask because I ain't dying to fumes! Wearing gloves is important too since spraying the beads is a very messy job. When I started spraying, I sprayed the beads one at a time and I realized I will quickly run out of spray since a lot of the pigment is going into the air. I then set up evenly spaced out groups of beads and laid them on a cardboard box and I did a mass spray paint for a batch of them at a time. This saved a lot of spray juice. The one downside to this is that sometimes you can't reach the bottom part of the wooden beads, so I was looking all around for any missed spots.

One thing I noticed is that for some beads, the paint started to drip down and the beads were sticking to the cardboard. After the beads dried and I picked them up, pieces of the cardboard stuck to the bottoms of the beads. To resolve this issue, I re-sanded the bottom of each of the beads so it wouldn't have an ugly piece of cardboard stuck to the bottom.

Spoiler: Sprayed bead

Spoiler: Getting ready to spray

Spoiler: Finished beads

Spoiler: Cardboard stuck to the bottom

Step 5: Finishing the Slime Omok Piece

First I drew the cute :3face on all of the slime pieces using the oil based marker. Then I cut 1 inch long pieces of black yarn so I can attach the slime bubble to the body of the slime piece. I put a tab of glue on the inside of the green transparent bead and rolled the end of the yarn in the tacky glue to maximize the surface of where it will stick to. Leaving a whole set of the slime bubbles to dry is important since it took a little bit for the glue to dry and I didn't want to move any of the pieces at all.

After I glued the piece of yarn to the top of the slime bubble, I glued that finished slime bubble piece to the main body of the slime and left it overnight to dry again.

Improvement: Used a different, stickier, type of glue. I found out that this glue isn't very sticky to the wooden surface nor to the plastic surface of the green transparent small bead. This is a HUGE improvement for this build because after I finished it all, I realized I needed to handle the pieces very well or else roughly placing them down or dropping them could mean that the entities will separate. I'm not sure what kind of glue would work better and I'm sure there are many other types of glue for this job, but tacky glue was nota very good glue for strong holds.

Spoiler: Drawing on the face

Spoiler: Gluing the slime bubble

Spoiler: A bunch of slime bubbles

Spoiler: A finished slime omok

Spoiler: Lots of slime omok glue drying

Step 6: Finishing the Mushroom Omok Piece

What is nice about the mushroom piece is that the body didn't need to be sprayed since the natural color of the mushroom was the wooden color. I simply drew a face on it before putting the mushroom hats on it.

With the mushroom hats, I made evenly sized balls all at once and then flattened them and shaped them to the curve of the wooden beads. I tried to make the clay all the same thickness and diameter. A good way to check the diameter was just to place the unbaked clay over a wooden ball to get the curvature right and look completely down to get the diameter right. After I made all of the clay pieces, I baked them for a little while to harden them. I put a piece of aluminum foil over the baking tray to preserve the tray itself. 1/3 of one batch of mushroom hats was a little over baked, so there were a dark circle at the top where the clay was in contact with the baking tray.

Then, I used my yellow oil-based marker to draw small circles on top of the mushroom hats. Fortunately, the oil-based markers covered most of the dark circles so it wouldn't look so ugly. After a short while waiting for the yellow marker to dry, I glued the top of the hardened clay to the body of the mushroom and let that dry overnight.

Spoiler: Drawing the face on the mushroom piece

Spoiler: Shaping and testing the mushroom hat

Spoiler: Creating balls, flattening, and baking the mushroom hats

Spoiler: NOT LIKE THIS

Spoiler: Colored mushroom hat

Spoiler: Mushroom army drying

___________________________Finished Omok Pictures___________________________​

Spoiler: Omok top-view

Spoiler: Omok angled-view

Spoiler: Omok board and pieces in box

I hope you all enjoyed this build as much as I did! It was quite a journey but I think the end product looks great and was well worth my time. <3

Peace,
Privateer

 

I think so too xD

It does take a while but I think it's worth it. It also isn't cheap to buy all the materials especially if you are like me and never do any art projects. I think with all new materials, it will cost around 80-110 USD.

It may have taken almost up to 20-30 hours to complete :O I wanted to compensate for broken pieces while shipping and just in case you get the perfect game and use all the pieces, I made 240 pieces total (238 was shipped since 1 of each piece on the last day while putting it all in the box broke).

She better appreciate it

Time to make your own set I did put my procedures just so that if anyone does want to attempt to make this for themselves, they can use this as a template

does this mean you have a real board too???

 

Go make an omok table