Monday, November 29, 2010

Have You Seen the Yellow Sign?

Hot off the work bench, here is my latest Cthulhu Cycle re-cover effort. This is a copy of Robert W. Chambers', The Yellow Sign and Other Stories, published by Chaosium as part of the Cthulhu Cycle series of short horror fiction books. It was made using the same techniques and in the same style as the other Cthulhu Cycle books I have recovered (which you can also find on this blog, in case you're a new visitor). It has a custom hard cover made with the crumpled paper technique and features the customary tentacle motif frame with brass tack heads, and a central glyph on the front cover. This time the glyph is my own interpretation of the Yellow Sign, which is based on a drawing by Jason VanMeter, which was probably inspired by the well known design by Kevin Ross.The sketch by VanMeter is one of my favorite Mythos images. It was just a simple doodle he made on the outside of an envelope that he had mailed from Japan to a mutual friend. The background was manila and it had several postmarks over top of it. I liked the image so much that I scanned it and spent hours doing color separations and clean up in photoshop (with my admittedly limited skills) to try to liberate the image from from its original media.

Click for larger images
The color scheme on this volume is different than any of the others I have done so far. It was done in mottled white and ivory acrylic paint over a yellow background and highlighted in gold. I also went with a gloss topcoat on this one, whereas I usually use a matte topcoat with this painting and finishing style. But I thought the gloss looked better with this color scheme. The glyph is done, as usual, in black with gold highlights. The book has yellow end papers and a black satin ribbon bookmark.


Because I was going with a lighter color scheme on this one, I used white butcher paper instead of brown kraft paper for the covering material. It seemed to work fine. In fact there was little difference to the way the two behaved. If anything, I thought the butcher paper was a little more manageable.


The tentacle motif frame around the front and back covers got an update with this edition too. The design I had been using  was very difficult to cut out with a razor knife due to its tight curves. I re-drew the border with slightly larger tentacles that had more gentle curves and fewer tight corners, so that it would be easier to cut. Otherwise, it looks very similar and you probably wouldn't have noticed the change if I hadn't pointed it out.


Saturday, November 20, 2010

New Domain Name

Old followers may have noticed that I recently added a title logo for this blog. I'm trying to spruce things up a bit. I also recently purchased the www.mrxdesigns.com domain name and a beefy hosting package (it was on sale). Right now it just redirects to this blog, but who knows, maybe soon I will add some other features and even set up a gallery or shopping cart on my site!

Upsetting News

I got an upsetting email the other day from the folks over at Shadowmanor.com, where I sold some custom covered blank journals last year. It seems they have had a complaint from one of their customers who purchased one of the books I made. It looks like the binding is experiencing some issues. Reading their understandably unhappy email, and seeing the (albeit fuzzy) pictures of the damage was very distressing to me. I am currently working with Shadowmanor.com to rectify the situation the best way I can. I have offered to fix any construction or materials issues that may exist for this, and any other of the books I made for them, at no charge. I'll even ship them back at my own expense.

Hopefully this is an isolated incident, but if you purchased one of my books from Shadowmanor.com and it is experiencing any construction or materials issues (short of abuse), please email me. You can send me your book and I will do whatever I can to fix the problem.

More Cthulhu Cycle Re-Covers

Hello all. It's been a while since my last post. I have started a new job, so I haven't been in the workshop as much. Plus, I just haven't felt like blogging lately. Oddly though, my traffic hasn't completely fallen off, and I've even picked up three new followers since my last post, about a month ago.

Here are some pics of my latest books to sell on eBay. They are all Cthulhu Cycle books published by Chaosium. They are all done in the same style as my previous Cthulhu Cycle re-covers.
First up: "Arkham Tales".




Next, "The Book of Eibon".



And third, "The Terror".




Each of these sold to the same guy on eBay. He is also interested in my re-cover of "The Yellow Sign", which is almost finished. He's going to have a lot of good reading to cozy up to the fire with this holiday season!