17 April 2013

the Encyclopaedia Elyden

Here's the title page of the Encyclopaedia Elyden, and the start of my new project... though don't expect it to be done anytime soon.

Title Page


I've always had an interest in bookbinding and grimoires and codices, especially prop-books used in movies, like the Ninth Gate book from the eponymous movie, 'the Ninth Gate', the Red Book of Westmarch from 'the Lord of the Rings' lore, or Lovecraft's Necronomicon, amongst others. I've always wanted to craft the Encyclopaedia Elyden to look like an in-world artifact, though until recently I envisaged creating the entire thing on computer and printing it out at a pro-printers or somewhere like createspace or lulu and then re-cover the book myself.

Though recently I've been toying with the idea of making the entire thing myself from scratch. Luckily for me, the mechanical printing press is no stranger to the world of Elyden so i could easily use an appropriate font and craft the book on computer, print signatures and bind the entire thing myself. I have some success crafting small diary-sized books and feel comfortable crafting the book, aging the pages, and binding it myself.

Even though that's the idea, its not something that'll take form anytime soon as i need to finish writing the book first, something that's a vicious circle tied to my other worldbuilding exploits... A life-long project, I imagine.

5 comments:

  1. I've heard tell that soaking a grained sketchpad page in weak coffee gives it a great "old parchment" look.

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  2. Yeah, that works, though the pages tend to stink a lot after that. Weathering powders used for scale modelmaking works a treat, also, and luckily i have quite a lot of those from my modelling exploits.

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  3. Yes. YES. YES!

    Good luck with it Nathan. An in-universe document would be really cool for sure.

    But of course, would the writers of it, in-universe, know the dire truths of their world?

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    1. true, something i've worried about but in retrospect, living in a world where the laws of physics and nature are often broken down and wombs vomit misshapen things, i think you know your world is going to pot. :)

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