Alisa Tochylovska brings us another master class in creating an immersive prop experience. The craftsmanship of her alien specimen is impeccable, but then she takes it to a whole new level with the containment box, additional samples recovered from a crashed alien spacecraft, and a selection of documents, photographs, and ephemera. Click through and take a look at the full gallery.
Burned Raven Tales returns to our pages with this nifty basilisk's tooth, complete with labeled storage crate.
Sladjana Vukelic returns to our pages with another impressive tome. She's an absolute master of distressing, as the worn condition of this brand new journal demonstrates.
Who knows what kind of strangeness might show up when you cast your net off Devil's Reef?
El Primo de Innsmouth returns to our pages with this candid look at a fisherman suffering from a severe case of the "Innsmouth look".
What is tomecraft? I first heard the term years ago as a way of describing the creation of fictional grimoires and books of forbidden knowledge. It covers the entire process, from coming up with an initial concept, through writing the text and finding or making the artwork to illustrate it, down to the final assembly of the book itself. In many ways it's the pinnacle of Mythos propmaking.
The most daunting part is the final bookbinding. Turning the individual pages into signatures, mounting them into a page block, and building the cover is an intimidating undertaking. I say that from personal experience. Thankfully, their are artisans like Dennis at Four Key Book Arts willing to share their experience and knowledge.
David Stay was kind enough to bring this video series to my attention. It starts with the decision to rebind the core Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks into a single massive tome and then goes through the entire process of breaking them down, reassembling the pages into a single block, and binding the whole thing in a beautiful leather cover.
It's a long process spread out over four videos. If you have any interest in making even a modest tome I highly recommend taking the time to watch the whole thing. There's something both relaxing and inspiring about watching an expert at work, and Dennis does an excellent job of describing each step of the job.
I know the idea of wanted posters in a typical fantasy TTRPG world is a little dodgy, but they're awesome props for players.
Pathfinder's "Kingmaker" Adventure Path is not only a great tabletop campaign but formed the basis of an equally fun video game from Owlcat Games. In many ways, it's a reimagining of the classic hex crawls of old-school D&D. Travel hither and thither, battle the forces of evil, bring civilization to the wilderness, and make lots and lots of money.
I have two versions of a wanted poster from the initial section of the campaign set at Oleg's Trading Post. The first is plain greyscale. Print it out on faux parchment, trim it to size, and you're good to go. The second version is for use with color printers and includes a background parchment texture. Print the "Reward" page, flip it over, and then print the blank parchment image on the back.
I do want to mention the posters should be trimmed according to the faint guide marks in each corner of the page. People handle bog-standard 8 1/2 by 11-inch paper every day. Resizing your handouts and paper props to avoid using standard sheets helps immensely with immersiveness.
To get the full-sized, high-resolution versions of each image, right click, open the link in a new tab, and then right click again to download directly.
This delightfully icky mummified head comes to us from the amazing Ugo Serrano. When it comes to dead things he's in a class by himself.* Just look at that wonderfully dusty patina.
*Please note my restraint in avoiding puns like "ahead of the rest". You're welcome. Heh.
Another glorious example of tomecraft from the talented Alex Libris. This white grimoire features hand tooled leather covers and custom cut brass hardware.
Fabelrot brings us a set of nifty alchemical vials. For anyone looking to create something similar, I strongly recommend browsing the bath care section of your local big box store. The various bath salts make great bottle filler, with a good variety of colors and crystal sizes.
Fire, forge, and steel. Wyrdcor returns to our pages with his Runemaster's necklace. Just look at that amazing patina.
You'll no doubt be shocked to learn a UFO "expert" has produced a pair of alien corpses for the Congress of Mexico.
"Mr Maussan told attendees the specimens had been studied by scientists at the Autonomous National University of Mexico (UNAM) who were able to draw DNA evidence using radiocarbon dating. After comparisons were made to other DNA samples, it was found that over 30% of the specimens’ DNA was “unknown”, he said.
X-rays of the specimens were also shown during the hearing, with experts testifying under oath that one of the bodies is seen to have “eggs” inside, while both were said to have implants made of very rare metals, such as Osmium."
There are a whole lot of red flags in those paragraphs. Then things get worse. I present to you the mummified/fossilized alien corpses:
Admittedly, I'm not an xenobiologist. That said, I'd be a bit disappointed to find these displayed at a roadside attraction on the side of the highway, much less before an official government body. They look exactly like the kind of home-made, sideshow-style gaffs that used to show up at gas station "museums" back in the day. I have a fondness for those old school fakes, but we should really expect better in this day and age.
This unique piece comes to us from Hard Waz Creations. Their Cthulhu tablet shows exactly when the "stars are right" to summon the Great Old One using the included runic incantation. Hand carved from slate.
One of the joys of the world we live in is how easy it is to see the work of like-minded folks from around the world. The one drawback? Translation technology isn't quite up to handling some niche cases.
I know this picture from WarhammerLARP is, well, from a Warhammer LARP event somewhere in eastern Europe. I know it's gang of players in beautiful costumes manning a recreation of the Hellblaster volley gun from the miniatures game. Even more impressive than that, there appears to be a full sized Imperial war wagon peeking out of the background.
Beyond that, I could use some help. The Instagram hashtag #вархаммер2023 leads to some amazing shots, but I can't quite pin down where the event happened. That said, Euro Warhammer LARPs are mind blowing.
This cool tableaux features the latest from Mille Cuirs, a bound journal bearing a custom embossment of Great Cthulhu. I love the prop tablet at the bottom almost as much as the book itself.
Our latest Cthulhu idol comes to us from artist R1 Chung. It's an undeniably great sculpt, and the paint job is just amazing. That said, this is another piece I'd really like to see with a stone or metallic finish.
Ross MacDonald is the artist responsible for creating prop documents and ephemera for hundreds of movies. That includes one of the most iconic props ever put on screen- the "Book of Secrets" from the 2004 "National Treasure" film starring Nicholas Cage. I stumbled across this interview with him last night and was amazed to see it had just a handful of views. My friends, this is propmaking gold.
In particular I want to draw your attention to the section on book distressing at around the 33 minute mark. It's a great explanation of how moisture causes dirt to migrate from the outside of the page block. As the paper expands and contracts in response to humidity, migrating particulate matter and oxidation triggers the familiar edge darkening found in old tomes. You can recreate it by browning the edges of paper with a flame, but it has to be done in a very particular, precise, and limited way. If you're burning the paper you're doing it wrong.
Morok Art Studio returns to our pages with this idol of Mictēcacihuātl. In Aztec mythology she was the consort of Mictlāntēcutli, ruler of the lowest level of the underworld.
I love this take on Nyarlathotep from sculptor Sadan Vague. You really need to click through and take a look at the pictures in their high resolution gallery.
