Rene's Third Faceup

I gave Rene a new faceup this week. I had a hard time figuring out what I wanted to do, except that I wanted him to have face tattoos, and for him to have a happier, less broody look. Jinas are naturally brooding or at least serious, so I was going to have a bit of a struggle combating that. Things actually turned out quite well, and I was very pleased with the results. Here are some photos from before glossing:

I had a lot of fun with the small details and the design. I actually modded/carved his mouth to curve up. It was a bit of an amateur job and it's not he best paint job because I had a hard time getting the old lip color out, but it turned out pretty good despite those things.

I still have a lot to learn when it comes to taking photographs though. The above photo was edited in photoshop a lot. I really like photos that minimize contrast without losing detail, or have a lot of bright spots without seeming overexposed, so that was what I was aiming for. I also only use a limited point and shoot, but it has a decent close-up setting and focuses pretty easily. I wish it had more options for blurring the background, but that's beyond its abilities so I have to do that in PS.

I wasn't going to bring him to Germany with me, but I will now that he is so adorable. As for Alain, I'm not sure whether he'll be going. I would like to sell his body before I go, but I have to finish modding the other arm first so they match. I was thinking of the new feeple60 body for him due to his first body being delf, but when I went back and looked at pictures of him on that body, the neck is so small that I don't think i want to. Maybe I will still plan on eventually getting an sdgr body, but in that case, maybe I shouldn't sell his current one yet. I wish Volks didn't have such huge hands though. Maybe I could find some matching ones that are smaller and fit on the wrist. I wonder if SD13 girl hands fit?

 He's changed a bit over the two years I've had him. I've had a really hard time getting him to the point where I actually loved the way he looked. When I look back now, his first faceup is better than the second, but he seems very tired. The second was artistically superior, but I had so many moments of hating his expression most likely due to his skinny arched eyebrows. I am in love with his current faceup though. While there are a few things I wish were different (his eyebrows are too reddish for the wig, which is fixed in the photos), I have to say that I'm extremely pleased and he finally looks a way that I love looking at. I think before I leave, I will finish cleaning his body and will blush at least his hands. 

Making a Planet Map

If your world is the size of a whole planet, you've probably tried at least a few times to draw a permanently accurate map of your planet. It's almost impossible to make something 2D that's both accurate and easy to read and understand. Even if you manage to make something nice looking, the size is distorted by the expansion of the polar regions. Really, you have to have a 3D model.

I've thought of buying a large white bouncy ball, a large wooden ball, or a large styrofoam ball.. or the mother of them all, a yoga ball, in order to make a globe map. But I don't have the money for the ball or the right materials to color them with (paint or sharpies, etc). Then today, I came up with the idea of making a globe out of paper, and of course the wonderful people on the internet have already done this for me.

Here is the best of what I found for making a paper globe.

The PDF comes with a pattern for three sizes: small, medium, and large. I haven't done it yet, but I will very soon.

Little Rabbit

 This stuffed rabbit is Steiff but his only tag says "Made in US-Zone Germany" which means he was made in the late 40s.

Creating A Language - Part 2 - Choose your Phonemes

Creating A Language Part 2

Choose your phonemes!Woo! Now we are ready to pick some phonemes for our language. This is the first major step! You can look at the IPA chart and pick as many or few phonemes as you want, but do keep in mind the following:

A phoneme is a distinct sound which cannot be replaced with another without changing the meaning of a word. /i/ and /u/ are distinct English phonemes because /bi/ (bee) and /bu/ (boo) are different words.

Even if you can't hear the difference, if two phonemes are different letters of the IPA, native speakers would be able to. Many non-English speakers probably think it is nuts that we can easily tell the difference between the words beat, bit, bet, bought, boot, but, bat, boat, bite, bout, boyt (not a word, but it could be), etc.

There are "language universals" which means that every language follows a certain rule. There are universals that are mandatory, and universals which are only a very strong trend. When choosing your phonemes, you must follow the mandatory ones if you wish your language to be realistic, and you should truly consider following the non-mandatory ones. (It is possible for there to be exceptions to these rules, but the incidences are so minute as to not be very important for our purposes).


So print out a copy of the IPA, pull out a pen, and start circling your sounds based on the following rules:

(this is not a complete list, but I think it is good enough for this project)

Vowels:
- All languages have at least two vowels, but tend to have at least three, which tend to be /i/ (as in bee), /u/ (as in boo), and /a/ (which we don't use by itself in English, but is common in many other languages. It is between the a in father and the a in cat.). You can have more of course!

-Back vowels tend to be rounded (o, u, etc) (your lips are rounded)


-Front vowels tend to be unrounded (i, a, etc) (your lips are unrounded). (of course there are languages with rounded front vowels like German umlaut o and u, but they also have the unrounded versions too).


Consonants
- All languages have consonants.

- All languages have stops. (you must have at least one sound from the row on the IPA labeled plosive: ie t, d, k, g, p, b, in English (and the glottal stop is also in English));

- All languages tend to have voiceless stops (left side of column in plosive row), nasals (nasal row), fricatives, and /h/

- Approximants tend to be voiced (normal and lateral) (right side of column)(if you have voiceless ones, you probably have their voiced counterparts)

- Stops and Fricatives tend to be voiceless (left side of column) (if you have voiced ones, you probably have their voiceless counterpart, with the exception of /p/ and /b/ where you can have /b/ without /p/)

- If a language has nasal vowels (vowels that sound.. nasally...), they tend to be on vowels the language already has in a non-nasal form (this is indicated with a ~ on top of the vowel).


General
- Every language has at least 11 phonemes and no more than 112.

- Every language has at least 6 consonant phonemes and no more than 81.

- Every language has at least 2 vowels and no more than 31 (O_o).

- The most common sounds are /p/, /t/, /k/, /m/, /n/.


So if you would like somewhere to start, begin your language with the sounds /p/, /t/, /k/, /m/, /n/, /h/, /i/, /u/, /a/... and then add and modify it from that point.


As always, if you have any questions, please leave me a comment. Also, feel free to leave your phoneme list (please copy and paste IPA letters from this keyboard.) and I will tell you if it's a good one that follows the rules!

If you have a phoneme list you are confident and happy with, you are ready to move on!

Sources and more rules for the truly dedicated:
http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAPhonologicalUniversal.htm
http://www.personal.rdg.ac.uk/~llsling1/Phonology/universals/universals.html
http://www.vistawide.com/languages/language_statistics.htm

Creating A Language - Part I - IPA

Creating A Language Part I

Introduction to Phonetics

Before we can take our language anywhere, we need to familiarize ourselves with the international phonetic alphabet. You know those funny letters in the dictionary that are supposed to tell you how to pronounce something but nobody can actually read? That's IPA (and linguists can read it).

It is imperative that you learn some IPA before beginning. Luckily, there are a lot of resources on the internet to help you out.

So I'll try not to reinvent the wheel here.

This is the IPA chart. Try not to get scared.



The large table has the "pulmonic" consonants; that is, they are made the normal way, by breathing out with our lungs through our mouth or nose.

The rows represent the way the sound is made in the mouth. For example, Plosives are sounds like t, p, and k, which have a sudden release of air. They are also called stops. Nasals and trills are fairly self explanatory. Fricatives are ones that have a continuous, but obstructed, airflow. Sounds like s, f, sh. So, the air is only flowing through a narrow opening which makes a hissing sound. The other most important category for our purposes is approximants--sounds like l and r. There is airflow, and it's unobstructed, but not so much so that it's a vowel.

The columns represent where in the mouth it's being made. The left side of the chart is the front of the mouth, and the right side is the back of the mouth, into the throat even.

So almost all sounds are a combination of where your tongue is and how much air is passing through.

The little nonsquare diagram on the right represents the vowels. The rows represent how much the mouth is open and the columns represent whether its made near the front or back of the mouth. Vowels come in pairs. The one on the right of the line is the one with rounded lips, and the one on the left of the line is the one with relaxed lips (o vs a for example).

The other letters outside of those two areas are sounds which are made by suction or other methods besides the "normal" way (such as clicks like in African languages).

Luckily for us, a lot of the letters correspond straight to what we are familiar with. Ones to watch out for are /j/ which is the english y sound (like German). /y/ is not an English sound. /r/ is a rolled r, not an English r. English r is represented by /ɹ /. There are other different ones too. J as in Judy and ch are not on the chart. They are "affricates," a combination of a stop and a fricative (J is d and the voiced sh... which is like the french J, ie Jean-Luc Picard. Ch is a combination of t and sh). They are written with the stop and fricative symbols touching. The vowels are also similar but different, so be sure to study them.

The reason I am attacking you with all this information is because the uninformed tend to be very narrow in their thought about what sounds a language can have. There are many, many sounds on those charts that don't occur in English, and we want them to be fair game for our made up language.

The best thing you can do now is familiarize yourself with the sounds. There are good videos on youtube for this if you want to go that route.

UCLA has a website that I used while in Phonetics class. You can explore the IPA there and click on the chart to hear the sound which corresponds to each letter, both syllable-initially and between vowels.

If you think you've got a good idea of how the IPA works, and have a better familiarity with the range of sounds in the world's language, then you are ready to move on to....!

Choosing Phonemes

Creating A Language - Introduction

Creating a Language

Introduction
I suspect that a lot of authors of science fiction and fantasy wish they could create a language. As a writer and a linguistics student, it's inevitable that I would try to make one. It's definitely not easy, and takes a lot of dedication if you really want to make it go places. But you don't have to make a whole usable language in order to make your fantasy or sci-fi world have a bit more credibility--there are a lot of benefits to creating even just a phonological system and lexicon.

Now, creating a language is a srs biznis. So I'm going to take these lessons srsly. If you're the type of person who is satisfied with scrambling your fingers across the keyboard to make up words and calling it good (like a certain author whose name starts in "Sal" and ends in "vatore"), you'll find these lessons tedious and unnecessary (though you would be wrong).

If you want a language with some believability, these tutorials are for you. But you will have to put some time into this, and even more time if you have no familiarity with the field of linguistics. But don't worry! I'll try to make it as simple and painless as possible. But necessarily, some parts of it might be complex and confusing.

If you have any questions, or don't understand part of it, please leave a comment, and I would love to help you out!

And now, without further ado...

Go on to the Next Lesson!

Fictional Races Exercise

I wrote this several years ago and it has since enjoyed a lot of attention on DeviantArt. I'm crossposting it here as well.

It was based on a class handout about Germanic Tribes. I modified and expanded it to help people make a more thorough and rounded fictional race.

Feel free to repost your filled out version online, but remember to link back here so others can use it too!


Fictional Races Exercise


Inhabitants and Origin of Name Where did your race/civ come from? Are they related through past history to another race, that made them who they are today? Where did the names of the land and race originate?

Climate, Land Conditions, Land exploitation Describe the land your race lives on, weather patterns, and what from the land your race exploites: metals, wood, farming, gems, fur, etc

Arrangements of Towns/Cities Do individuals own their land or does the government? How much land does one family occupy? Do they have homes close together or far apart with a lot of land in their care? Are homes generally large or small? How many families live in a single building? What other buildings are in every town? Bakery, Butcher shop, Post Office, Fire House, etc. What are homes made out of? Are they built among the lay of the land or is the land renovated for building purposes?

Physical Characteristics What does the race look like? Eyes, Hair, skin, build, height, weight, whether they are physically strong or not, relations to weather condtions (are they built for cold weather or warm weather), differences between males, females, children, etc

Dress What is the garb of the race? Traditional, Everyday, Seasonal, Ceremonial, Differences between men, women, children, position of power, etc. What are the clothes made out of? Who makes them? A tailor, an elder, or family members? What jewelry do they wear, if any? How is hair worn? Is it different between age and gender?

Deities/Religion Explain the religious figures of the race, and the powers they are believed to have, as well as their relationship to the people. What beliefs does the race have about how to behave and treat others, objects, animals, etc? In times of war? In times of peace? How big of a role does it play in the daily life of the race?This is an important factor, don't overlook it. If there isn't a religion, explain what about the race makes them independent from religious faith

Religious Practices and Divination How does the race worship? What are their customs and rituals? Are there any sacred items, creatures, times of the year?

Habits in Times of Peace What is the behavior of the race when peaceful? Are they ever peaceful? Do they hold festivities, behave differently to others? Are roles different than in times of war?

Daily Life What do they do, from waking to sleeping? Eating, Bathing, Interacting, working...Describe basic rituals.

Food Describe what the food is like, typical ingredients, meats, spices, herbs, grains...What importance does it have in the culture? What alcohol and other beverages? Is there religious or historical factors in what they eat?

Sports and Pastimes What is done for fun? Is there organized entertainment? Clubs, teams, competitions? What significance to the culture?

Marriage Rituals What is the ceremony like, if there is one? Who comes to the ceremony? What is worn? What gifts are passed between families? Money, jewelry, animals, or other objects? What is the marriage age? Is marriage a choice? Are spouses chosen by another family member/the government? What is inherited in marriage? A name, object, positionm etc. What are the roles of the male and female? What are the benefits of having kids? How many kids are typically had? What are the religious or historical factors in a marriage ceremony?

Children and Succession Who takes care of the children? How are they raised as babies? What are they taught as small children that's important to society? Who inherits what in the family? How are children treated? When are they considered adults? How is inheritance determined?

Training of Youth How are the young prepared for adulthood? Who trains them? Are there difference branches of training? Do children inherit their occupation or do they choose? Is there a formal institution of education or do elders and parents train the children? How much is left for experience? What's the most critical lesson children learn?

Government and Gender Roles Who runs the race/civilization? Is it a matriarch, patriarch, dictatorship, is there a king or an elected official? What are the roles of men and women in the government and society? Almost every civilization on earth has a government of some sort. Even if it doesnt play into your story, explore this factor of the race

Councils If there's a problem who is it taken to? What other uses for council are there? How much power do they have? How are the members appointed? Who appoints them?

Administration of Justice How is crime dealt with? How are criminals caught, and what happens to them? What are the crimes most strongly punished, and what is the religious or historical basis behind it, to create such extreme punishment for committing this act? How much leniancy does the race have? Are they passive with criminals, or aggressive? Is there a lot of crime or little?

Arms, Military Conduct Describe weaponry and how the military is run, formal or otherwise. What strategies are typical for this race to perform in war? Who controls the troops? How are they chosen? Any reactions to death by war? How does religion play into warlike behavior? Who fights? Men, Women? How old are the troops?

Habits in Times of War How does the society react to war? Do the people tighten or fall apart? How do roles change? What is the defense system? How is victory celebrated?

Funeral Rituals What is done with the dead? Who comes to funerals? How is the dead prepared? What is the garb? What are religious beliefs tied to death? What is the age range of death? Is the family compensated by the government, gifts from guests, etc?


Additional Topics
Language
Currency
Slavery
Elderly
Relationship with Nature
Power in the World
...