Preserved Topic: New font i am trying to finish LOTR Style (Page 1 of 1)

well this is a font i am working on based on tolkiens elvish alphabet using the style he used in the books comments please

It's pretty. I can't read it though because its so small and the fire is distracting at that size and it doesn't seem to be in english anyway.
But it's pretty

^ What she said.

LOL hmmm its not meant to be in english,

Its the top chracters i meant... it is elvish characters...

the bottom is a translation

"one ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them"

ok i have an idea i will link to the larger image but be warned its big, gimme a few mins to ftp it up...

176k biggy



[This message has been edited by tomeaglescz (edited 10-04-2002).]

OK i tidied the flames up a bit what ya think now ????

Remove the flames. The letters are pretty enough by themselves. Nothing more than, say, a slight glow around their edges is necessary; but that only if it doesn't look photoshop filtered =)

Thx slime, zou are right about the flames, but i thought i would add them to the fobnt i am creating in this image just for illustration purposes..

when everzthing is finsihed i will post an image of the font here, i am not sure what to do with it as it is very close to tolkien§s own characters and therefore could be in breach of copyright if i distributed it, guess i will end up using it just for myself .

Anyone got any ideas or input on this ???

Nothing except what the others have said. Just a little question: do you know the language used?

_________________________
Anyone who has lost track of time when using a computer knows the propensity to dream, the urge to make dreams come true and the tendency to miss lunch.
- copied from the wall of cell 408 -

Much more visible now.
This looks more like you traced it, then actually working towards creating a font. It's still pretty. BUT
The scrolls ascending the letters are inconsistent. Some of the curves are jagged. The characters are inconsistent, meaning that the "p" has a bigger circle in one word then it does in the next. If you're creating a font, I'd try to make letter widths and heights the same, the ascendents and descendents the same, the counters the same (that's the negative space in letters like "o,a,p,g,b,q").
Nice work so far. Thanks for sharing.

OK here is the exact process i am following.


I have most of tolkeins books and i am trzing to recreate the alphabets and numerals as close as i can to those in the books in a font.

The example i have shown is an elvish font.

According to tolkien when he created the languages used in all of his works, the elvish one was the forerunner of all languages so most are similar in form.

This font is from the oldest of the elvish languages that tolkien created The Tengwar. However it was written on the ring by sauron so it is a human
writing so again there are incosistencies.

okies what i am trying to do is reproduce all the chracters and turn them into a font (makes life easier than drawing them by hand each time ), but still giving it the look as if it was hand drawn (make sense ????)

so anyway i am half way thru the tengwar, then its onto the dwarvish stuff.

And why??? hehehe simple i am working on some stuff for my portfolio and wanted to try and keep thinmgs original as possible...

As for the spacing and curves etc. the problem is that different curves mean the letter takes on a new meaning.

In tolkiens books he explains that the elvish language/alphabet isnt like as we know understand say english, but more a collection of symbols and by changing the shape of them you can change the whole meaning into something completely different....

anyway enough of that glad ya like it....

potters off to finish some scanning, and then to the debate area....Yo Ram i am on my way.....

Here's a site you might be interested in for reference. http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Alley/1557/fonts1.htm It has a number of fonts based on the runes and scripting used in many of Tolkien's works, including Anglo-Saxon and Germanic runes, and Theban script, which is an old alpahetic system that the Tolkein loosely based his Elven script on.

Though, I must say, the fontography techniques you're using are really nice. It's pretty cool to see someone bring a little more Tolkien into the world.

[edit: oops--clicked post before i was finished...]

[This message has been edited by Quade (edited 10-04-2002).]

Yo Quade thanks for the link passes a couple of cookies plus 1 or 2 black pills

Just to be clear here, you're saying that the letter resembling a "p" should look different each time its used? How is that a font then? Are you going to create 4 different versions of each character? Ug that would suck.
What I meant by curves and what-not is that they have jagged edges, they don't look like a pencil or brush stroke.

Hehehe Jeni,

Ok to address your points.

Really there are only two versions of every symbol if you simplify everything to a usable level (ie in fonts) the Hook (the curve) the bow (the upper part of the letter) depending on which is lengthened or made more open changes the way in which the symbol would be said, quite similar in the way that accents are used in languages.

As for the jaggies on the text i wanted to create the effect that the fire had in someway damaged the text so i messed around with the letters in photoshop when i added the flames. It was kind of symbolic as the elvish sysmbols had been used in a corrupt way by sauron in the lord of the rings, so i used the flames to show the text being eroded from its pure form... ( call it artistic license ).

if ya follow quades link there are other examples of people doing something similar to what i am attempting to do, but i wanted to add a bit of variety to it, as if it is written by hand (the shape of everything would not be exact but it would be readable..

anyway as long as it looks cool and remains pretty faithful to the books is what i am trying to achieve, but not clinical make sense???

Tom...

Get your ass in the Philo forum and finish the debate

Insider see the peanut gallery and try to stick to the topic next time

Here is one of the reasons whz i am working on these fonts for textures etc. see this image In The 3D Forum very much a WIP




[This message has been edited by tomeaglescz (edited 10-05-2002).]