starwarsgeek
03-13-2010, 01:42 AM
So, this is a project that I've been working on for about the past three years, maybe four. I'm not only a huge Star Wars fan, but a big fan of the Indiana Jones Trilogy as well. Yes, I said "trilogy". Ahem.
Anyway, one of the coolest things about the final movie in the trilogy is Henry Sr's Grail Diary. There are oodles of websites about it, and plenty of people have made their own prop replicas and what not, and I decided I wanted to do one as well.
I was able to get several "templates" for the text of the book. There was a diary included with a video game of the movie from back in the day, and someone was kind enough to transfer all the text from that into a word file. There were also several other fan made diaries out there that contained other pages. There are several pages that have been seen in the films and several books that I have that show the pages in their entirety or almost entirely.
I took as many sources as I could, and merged as much info as I could into a single, flowing story, and created a large text document in word from that. Next, I went about reading through ALL the pages (and if I'm not mistaken, it's close to 200) several times, correcting typos and mis-spelled words. I had to re-arrange lots of pages, because they were in mixed up order and the story didn't read in chronological order.
There are also plenty of drawings and maps and stuff inside the diary, which I had to get from several other sources.
THEN I had to learn about bookbinding. Yes, I took a quick course at the local high school and several workshops at craft stores to learn how to actually bind a book, using thread and the proper types of end papers, and stuff like that. AND watched a shitton of YouTube videos. Hey, I want this to be as authentic as possible. Right now the book is going to get printed using a font called "Henry's Hand" which was made by a fan to resemble the handwriting in the original diary. However, all the real replica prop guys make their own hand written diaries, so that's what my final version will consist of. Shit, I've read through this so many times I could probably sit down and write the whole thing out from memory, lol!
So, I did a quick printout of all the pages, trimmed them to the proper size, and put them together real quick just to see what it would look like... here are some photos of my latest test print of my almost completely ready to be printed diary...
http://www.starwarsgeek.net/images/grail/binding1.jpg
http://www.starwarsgeek.net/images/grail/binding2.jpg
http://www.starwarsgeek.net/images/grail/binding3.jpg
http://www.starwarsgeek.net/images/grail/binding4.jpg
The colored tabs on the sides of the pages are just my way of knowing where each signature starts in the book itself. There are also colored tabs on the top, showing where there are more corrections to be made... it's like a never ending process.
Anyone that knows anything about Henry's Grail Diary knows that the coolest part is the inserts. All kinds of things are shown within the Diary during the film - plane/train tickets, telegrams, various foreign currency... all kinds of neat stuff. Again, doing a ton of research into the book, I gathered resources to create all kinds of replica items... I'll take photos of some of those items soon.
Anyway, one of the coolest things about the final movie in the trilogy is Henry Sr's Grail Diary. There are oodles of websites about it, and plenty of people have made their own prop replicas and what not, and I decided I wanted to do one as well.
I was able to get several "templates" for the text of the book. There was a diary included with a video game of the movie from back in the day, and someone was kind enough to transfer all the text from that into a word file. There were also several other fan made diaries out there that contained other pages. There are several pages that have been seen in the films and several books that I have that show the pages in their entirety or almost entirely.
I took as many sources as I could, and merged as much info as I could into a single, flowing story, and created a large text document in word from that. Next, I went about reading through ALL the pages (and if I'm not mistaken, it's close to 200) several times, correcting typos and mis-spelled words. I had to re-arrange lots of pages, because they were in mixed up order and the story didn't read in chronological order.
There are also plenty of drawings and maps and stuff inside the diary, which I had to get from several other sources.
THEN I had to learn about bookbinding. Yes, I took a quick course at the local high school and several workshops at craft stores to learn how to actually bind a book, using thread and the proper types of end papers, and stuff like that. AND watched a shitton of YouTube videos. Hey, I want this to be as authentic as possible. Right now the book is going to get printed using a font called "Henry's Hand" which was made by a fan to resemble the handwriting in the original diary. However, all the real replica prop guys make their own hand written diaries, so that's what my final version will consist of. Shit, I've read through this so many times I could probably sit down and write the whole thing out from memory, lol!
So, I did a quick printout of all the pages, trimmed them to the proper size, and put them together real quick just to see what it would look like... here are some photos of my latest test print of my almost completely ready to be printed diary...
http://www.starwarsgeek.net/images/grail/binding1.jpg
http://www.starwarsgeek.net/images/grail/binding2.jpg
http://www.starwarsgeek.net/images/grail/binding3.jpg
http://www.starwarsgeek.net/images/grail/binding4.jpg
The colored tabs on the sides of the pages are just my way of knowing where each signature starts in the book itself. There are also colored tabs on the top, showing where there are more corrections to be made... it's like a never ending process.
Anyone that knows anything about Henry's Grail Diary knows that the coolest part is the inserts. All kinds of things are shown within the Diary during the film - plane/train tickets, telegrams, various foreign currency... all kinds of neat stuff. Again, doing a ton of research into the book, I gathered resources to create all kinds of replica items... I'll take photos of some of those items soon.