interesting oriental glyph/runes

[sphr]

found this particular oriental font that looks fantastic (my opinion). Due to the fact that it is used even in modern days to carve stone stamps/seals, the general shape of the glyphs more or less preserves the features of what it was since the time before paper/cloth where words are carved into hard surfaces. The characters are chinese, (but NOTHING like modern chinese) but those who can read japanese kanji will find a lot of them very familiar. I especially like the mixture of some glyphs being pictorial (looks like actual objects) while some words are symbolic (e.g. composed of different parts each of which is another glyph, that gives it meaning when put together)

e.g. the kanji character "nin" part of ninja (meaning tolerance) is made up the character "ha/yaiba" (means edge of a blade/blade) over "kokoro" which means the spirit/heart. So "tolerance" is symbolized by a (bared) blade over the heart.

Here're the characters in the font I meantioned.
First, this is the character for katana (sword) (probably pictorial)


This is the character for blade/edge of sword (pictorial + symbolic?)


This is the character for heart (probably pictorial. looks similar to valentine's heart)


This is the composed character for "nin". (The top part is actually the character for blade if you look closely)



misc, ninja will look like this using the glyphs



(ancient text is usually vertically downwards from right to left. probably due to the fact that pre-paper "books" are "written" on bamboo strips arranged vertically and tied together at the top and bottom with strings (sort of like a window blinds. This is actually convenient cos a reader can easily hold the rolled up scroll vertically, exposing the few columns he is reading, slowly rolling the scroll along. He can hold the scroll in one and, and easily read while walking or doing things with the other.... handy Exceptions to the vertical direction may be things like sign boards over shop doors or the city gates, which will probably be horizontal, but still written from right to left.)

If anybody wants to know any characters (e.g. for purpose of modding/adding texture etc), I can try to find out for you, though I can probably only post in images as I think the fonts are non-standard (it will appear as modern chinese characters when I try to use it in anything other than the word processor)

Just for interest's sake, I tried to find out some of the glyphs for the mini word list I was passively working on, so you can go there to look at some more glyphs (not a lot atm though).

[Kodama]

That looks nice sphr, when i looked at the top glyph, i thought "sword" so they are perfect for Akavir :goodjob: