So, when I started this project one of the main objectives was to re-create hi-resolution version of all the pages to share with the internet since I wasn’t able to find any while creating my replica and I bet theres a couple crazy people out there that also want to make their own journals. Once I finished all the canon pages I realized there were many awesome creatures and artifacts that never show up on the book within the show so I re-watched the series another 4 times and created new pages for every episode that was missing in the book. Here I leave you a ZIP file on my download section where you can download them all. There are landscape pages Folio size in 300dpi. Download here! Download here! As always It´s all for free, use them as you like, if you put a link back to this page, that´d be really nice, if not, its ok too. Enjoy! And I will tell everyone yet again, if you have not watched this series, please do, it’s amazing.
Gravity Falls Journal 3 – Part 8: last details
And finally, the last details are added, which are the photos, maps and other schematics that go glued or attached with tape to the book: Done! And yes… there should be a lot of red parts… but since I made photocopies so the coffee wouldn’t wash away the ink while aging the paper… everything had to be black =(. Color photocopies are rather expensive.. and there were a lot of pages to copy… so there, convenience won this time… If you want to download all the pages in hi-res including the ones i invented, head over to the download page (its all for free!) Keep it mysterious! And watch Gravity Falls if you have not, it’s a masterpiece of animation, storytelling, character design, narrative, coloring, etc, etc, etc.
Gravity Falls Journal 3 – Part 7: final assembly
To fix the hand to the cover I just went with screws. It is very strong, and I think it look cool and medieval. I made holes in the copper with this tool: Here is the hand with holes in the copper sheet ready, and the number “3″ painted with black nail polish: Here are the are the corner parts: If you want to know how I made and painted these, here is a post I made about the process in more detail. Its very important to make small holes before putting in the screws so that the wood, trupan or other material you are using wont split once the screws go in. This is the only pieces that i bought, some cool metal corners: Here is the cover with the hand and corner pieces all screwed in place: But since the book is actually red, I used cherry colored acrylic paint to give the leather a red-ish hue. Also a couple of gold painted straps for the side. And the book is almost done. To be continued!
Gravity Fals Jounal 3 – Part 6: leather cover
For the cover of the book I used actual leather since I already make all my book with it and I had a lot at hand… This is my half-a-cow-hide, it’s called “Sally”. And here is the book on top of the leather to calculate the size of the leather I needed to cut: The leather already cut: Then I just used some strong white glue (if you have wood glue use that) After pasting the leather I cut the remaning part out. Yes, i know this is very far from the correct way to cover a book with leather, but 1) its very very fast and easy, and 2) I kinda like it… so there… I’m lazy… By the way, for the back part i just covered the leather in this fantastic kind of duct tape that’s made out of fabric. It looks like this, really have no idea whats its official name… And yes.. I know that the journal from Gravity Falls is red all around and has no black parts.. but I usually just make some changes on the original designs if I like them so this is one of those changes. To be continued!
Gravity Fals Jounal 3 – Part 5: The 6-finger hand
To make the hand on the cover I first turned a screenshot of the book into the size of the paper I wanted to use (half-folio). Here is the printout on my pre-cut piece of trupan (already on the correct size of the final book) just for a final size check: Paper hand cut on top of a random crap of trupan: I sprayed the whole thing with whatever color I had near: And then I lifted the paper and had a perfect mark to cut out the trupan. Here is the trupan hand allready cut: And here is the sheet of copper that I used to make the metal cover of the trupan hand: Here is the coper hand ready to go on top of the trupan part: And finally, here is the trupan hand, covered with the copper sheet (u used ). To be continued!
Gravity Falls Journal 3 – Part 4: page-binding
For this part I just did a mix of Coptic stitch and other kinds into one that I find easy to do. (For info and tutorials about the actual stitching check this youtube channel, that should be all the styles and techniques you need ) First I joined the pages into 4 sheet signatures: Then I used my punching cradle to make holes for the thread. Here are the signatures with the holes ready: The comes a couple pieces of fabric to hold the thread: (For info and tutorials about the actual stitching check this youtube channel, that should be all the styles and techinques you need ) And finally, I put some hard begin and end to the text block (which I of course forgot at the beginning) The i used a bit of standard common gauze medical for the upper part: Text block ready! To be continued!
Gravity Falls Journal 3 – Part 3: aging the paper
As I did before I used warm water with coffee to make the paper look old. This time I added a bit of brown dye so I don’t need to add so much coffee. Put the pages and wrinkle them once inside the coffee, which will not only change the color of the paper but actually make it look like those ancient pirate maps.. If you the paper looks too old and wrinkly just do the wrinkling before submerging in the coffee. I used a large plastic sheet to let the pages dry… And here are all the pages drying: And here is the final result: To be continued!
Gravity Falls Journal 3 – Part 2: Printing Booklets
So, since I wanted to bind this using 4-page signatures (like in this tutorial), I needed to print the page spreads in a very special page order … which I (of course) didn’t know how to do, thus, my first idea was to make mini signatures to know what was the page order supposed to be… So later I could arage my pages on inDesign in the same order: And then came knowledge and the horrid shadow of ignorance left and I learned that inDesign has a magical tool to make this whole thing automatically! So here is how my document looks liks in inDesign, just pages in regular order, nothing fancy: This awesome tool is over here: And here are the settings I used to print my document as 4-page-spread signatures: This is magical. To be continued!
Gravity Falls Journal 3 – Part 1: redrawing the pages
The first part was to re-draw the inner pages. I mainly used the archive of pages at the Gravity Falls Wiki as reference. I decided to make my journal with all the pages available from Journal 1, 2 and 3 put together since that makes for a way larger tome. I took each screenshot, warped it in photoshop to make a flat page. Here are a couple examples. —— The Security Room Page —— Original screenshot: Warped and reshaped: Redrawn in hi res: —— The Percecepshroom Page —— Original screenshot: Warped and reshaped: And then re-drawn in hi-res, in cases like this, I had to invent a lot of the pages since there is a lot that’s never shown. Also, since I wasn’t going to make the whole invisible ink stuff I did a mix of the original text and the invisible ink text. —— The Summoning Page —— Original screenshot: Warped, reshaped and completed: And then re-drawn in hi-res: I’ll post links to all the pages I redrew on the download section.
Gravity Falls Journal 3 – Intro
Gravity Falls is one of the best shows ever made, probably my favorite; the story and art are absolutely fantastic and it’s full of mysterious artifacts and weird props of all kinds. Sadly, yet understandably, this masterpiece is coming to its end soon, so I decided to pay tribute and build a replica of the mysterious Journal 3 that is a central part of the show. I was thinking of making just the covers but then I started searching for the inner pages and found plenty of documentation, info and screenshots of the show and the journal over at the Gravity Falls Wiki so in the end I decided to make the complete thing, with all the inner pages. It the next posts I’ll be showing the process of the build.