At The Mountains of Madness Playing Cards

JC Randomart and illustration, bookbinding, cthulhu2 Comments

Interested in mysterious Lovecraftian items? Couple months ago I was contracted to make several eldritch pages and illustrations for this very cool Kickstarter project: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cthulhuproject/at-the-mountains-of-madness-lovecraft-playing-cards You can get some playing cards with illustrations inspired in the story At the Mountains of Madness, it comes with with a very nice wooden box and there are several other arcane items like ancient coins (designed by the absolute master Tomas Hijo), a stony Cthulhu idol and a super heavy leather bound ancient book illustrated by me!

Evil Dead necronomicon full color pages

JC Randomart and illustration, bookbinding, diy, download5 Comments

The “Colorama Project” has begun! I’ve started making full color version of all the pages I have from the classic Evil Dead Necronomicon. I already had several of the pages, but they were quite disordered, also, If there were 2 versions of the same page (for example one version from the first movie, and another from Evil Dead 2) I just kept the most clear, now I´m making ALL the pages from all the versions, so you can make thicker books of just have a more complete collection of pages. the first pages are up and I will be uploading new pages every week (I hope along with more pages from the Deus Tenebris). If you want see all the pages (created up until now) and get them as PNG images, you can download them from google drive on the following link: Get the pages from google drive!

The Book of the Dead from The Mummy, final video

JC Randombookbinding, diy, video1 Comment

The Book of the Dead from the Mummy is ready! and here is a video summary of the project! There were MANY mistakes, but it’s done. The whole project took arround 3 weeks since we work on our off time but editing the video took many months since I wasn’t sure what exactly to show and what to take out… In any case, here it is:

The Mummy project (part 8) assembling the pages and final aging

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This is the the last important step, adding the pages. Since we couldn’t find any reference of a working functional book of the dead, we had to be creative. Each one of our drop-shaped wooden parts has a strip of leather going around it and that holds a page from both sides. We used superglue and a couple of tiny nails to secure each page: Here is a couple detail photos: Once all pages are ready we starded ading all the pieces on the spine of the book. We just applied the same Bitumen of Judea that was used to age the cover decorations: First apply the bitumen then remove a little bit so that all the grooves stay dark: And now the spine is ready! And the pages are functional!

The Mummy project (part 7) cover assembly

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Now that basically all parts are ready, it’s just a matter of putting all together. Since I wanted the cover pieces to be rather secure in the cover but I didn’t want to use screws I applied a good amount of 2 part epoxy: Once the epoxy is dry I applied a bit of Bitumen of Judea which in theory is used to age furniture: Since the lines on the cover and the black vertical decoration piece are lower than the rest of the surface, the dark aging would normally make them very visible but since this book is all black those parts required a “whitening” aging process. I used a bit of glue and all the sawdust that was all over my shop from making all the parts from the book.

The Mummy project (part 5) cover decorations

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For the decorations on the cover we first transferred the designs onto the plywood: Then cleared the paper so only the toner from the photocopies stays: later we cut away all borders and internal pieces that should be hollow: Then It’s a matter of pyrographing all bas-reliefs: Giving it a couple coats of pain and varnish: And finally assembling: And those are the decorations! Next up… making some scarabs maybe?

The Mummy project (part 4) assembling the spine

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Now that the cover holders are ready, we can do the rest round pieces that are needed to hold the inner pages and fill the spine of the book. The process is the same, print out the shapes, glue them to the plywood and cut everything: Now that all the pieces are ready, we can try to assemble the spine to test the size of everything: Time to paint! First a black base and then a couple of hands of gold and a touch of brass color. It looks kinda lame and yellow, but it will look just right after aging. Now a bit of assembling: The spine is ready! Now that we know the exact length of the spine, we can cut the long screw to the proper size. And now the spine is ready! Next episode, will build the decorations that go onto the cover!

The Mummy project (part 3) cover holders and birds

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Now that the covers and pages are ready, it’s time to make the wooden parts that hold them together. All of those: Based on the size of the cover I drew a very rough sketch of a side-view of the book: And then re-drew it on illustrator so I could print any number of copies: The final printout looks like this: You can download the full res version from the Mummy download page. Here is applied directly on to the plywood for cutting: After the shapes are cut, it’s time for sanding: An so, the cover holders are ready: One last detail that was added is the squares texture that goes on top of each piece. First just drawn by hand: And then burnt: With those ready, let’s make the birds that hold the front cover in place. The procedure is basically the same. First a very rough sketch: Then into illustrator: Finally printed and glued onto the plywood to cut: The extra step here is that, once the piece is cut, there a bit of extra dremeling necessary to actually get the curved shape on top: The I added a bit of 2 part epoxy clay to mode the … Read More