The Gloomnomicon
I've created quite a body of work now with fellow musical-magician Gloom Darkheart . Our "Gloom Theory" music is wrapped up in the lore of an ancient tome, the 'Gloomnomicon'. It's a book of rites, recipes and alternative history with a slightly human-touch. You're not summoning demons or ancient evils - you're hexing minor invonceniences, petty revenges and maybe the odd splash of life-changing horror.
There are over a hundred pages of it now hidden on our music website that people seek out and collect.
Obviously, that meant I needed to make one.
The 3D Model
It began where all Blake toys do, a 3D asset. My weapon of choice is still 3ds Max (I really need to pick up Blender at some point, but I'm still stuck in the Autodesk workflow). I began by blocking out the basic shape of the closed book, a block, and getting the proportions and size feeling right. Slightly chunky, slightly archaic - not quite square. I also burnt in that iconic eye symbol onto the front before taking it to the next step.
Then it was into Zbrush. With something this organic, it had to feel sculpted, hand-made and one-of-a-kind. I could do that in max, but working in such high resolution is much easier in a sculpting tool.
An hour or two of sculpting and I was very happy with the mesh. It felt clean and bold, while still aged and decrepid. The final stage was to bring it into Substance Painter and creative a horrifically messy texture for the book.
The final stage of the 3D model was to map out the mesh into a flat, 2D plane so that its texture could be painted. This process, known as UV mapping, is usually quite fiddly when it comes to complicated models. Luckily the Gloomnomicon is a relatively simple mesh, and so it was quick to flatten out with an app called RizomUV. After 10 minutes or so I had something usable:
If you're not familiar with games dev, you should ge tan idea from that image how it works. The 3D asset on the left is mapped to a 2D asset on the right. You can then paint the details onto the flattened out texture and it maps back to the 3D asset.
The Texture
I was a bigger fan of Substance painter back before Adobe bought it (it's getting considerably 'bulkier' feeling now) but it's still my go-to when I need procedural and quick texture work.
I brought in the sculpted, uv-mapped asset and laid down the basic blocks of how I felt the book should look. I knew I wanted that 'old leathery skin' look but I couldn't really find any build in 'leather' substance textures that fit. Eventually, scrolling through I found 'old wood, which seemed to work great.
I slowly built up the details - wear and tear, grime and finally blood and guts. I did some experiments with 'frozen' and 'burning' versions of the book to see how they felt, but eventualy I settled on just keeping a 'grimey' look.
Preparing it to print
Once the model was in a good place, I spent some time making sure it would actually print. This is always the less glamorous part of the process, but it's usually where a project either works or quietly explodes into a vat of failed resin. The high-res model had to be cleaned up, checked, and hollowed out (otherwise you're printing an expensive block of plastic that's likely to fail). I also had to check there were no holes, and that it would sensibly print.
On top of this, I added the leather texturing in ZBrush rather than trying to paint it on later, as I wanted the physical print to catch drybrushing and washes properly. Little pores, wrinkles and cuts all help the paint do the hard work later on. The biggest thing with this sort of object is making sure the details are not too subtle. What looks nicely detailed on a monitor can completely vanish once it's printed, primed and painted. Resin printing is great, but primer and paint still soften everything a little. I tried to exaggerate the leathery surface just enough that it would survive the full process without looking like a melted cereal bar
And then it was off to the printer for a 7 hour goop-in-a-vat marathon.
You can see a few of the supports failed, but it seemed to come out just fine, luckily. This was printed as a solid closed-book prop rather than something functional with pages and hinges. I did toy with the idea of making a more elaborate version with opening parts, loose pages or some kind of hidden magnety thing, but that felt like a future-me problem. This version was about getting the overall look and feel right. Perhaps in the future I'll revisit and try to come up with some way to make it more book-like.
Painting
Once printed, cleaned, cured and tidied up, it was onto my favourite part - painting.
This one was completely hand painted. No airbrush this time. I wanted the finish to feel rougher and more painterly, and the kind of grimy, organic surface felt like a good excuse to get in with brushes and make a mess.
I started with primer, then built up the base colours for the leather and raised details. From there it was lots of washes, stippling, drybrushing and generally poking at it until it looked suitably horrible. The leather got darker tones worked into the recesses, with lighter drybrushing over the raised texture to bring out all the little ZBrush details.
The grime was probably the most fun part. I added dirty greens, browns and blacks into the cracks and edges to make it look damp and mouldy. I wanted it to feel like something that had spent a few centuries being passed from owner to owner and kept hidden in in filing cabinets, absorbing dank basement air.
The blood was added carefully, which sounds weird when describing fake blood on a haunted book, but it's very easy to overdo. Too much and it starts looking like a Halloween decoration. I wanted it to feel like dried, old, slightly sticky stains, with a few fresher wet-looking areas. To sell that, I used glosses on the parts that needed a sheen. The wet bits, the bloodier sections, and some of the grimier mouldy areas got a little shine to contrast against the flatter, older leather. That really helped make the surface feel varied rather than one big matte brown blob.
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Primed
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A base paint and some basic washes
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Adding the blood and grime
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Varnish for varying 'wetness'
I'm pretty happy with how it all came out. It has a nice gnarly texture to it and the gloss details catch the light in a suitably unpleasant way. The grime, mould and blood all help sell the idea that this is not a book you should be touching. It's now sitting in a display cabinet, looking suitably moody.
As mentioned, maybe later I'll try to reapproach the project making it more 'functional'. It sits next to my great replica of the Necrnomicon from Evil Dead that opens up and has pages. I'd love to figure out how to do something similar.
Hope you enjoyed a look behind the scenes making this prop!
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Who I am
I'm Blake and I like to tinker with things and make stuff. When I'm not programming or developing random systems, I'm playing with electronics, doodling bits of art, 3D modelling or sculpting and painting things or nerding out watching sci-fi or horror TV.
From 2001 I worked in the games industry, eventually specialising in tools to aid in the development of video games and their engines. In 2011 I left the industry and teamed up with a few other talented composers to utilise my knowledge to help build the company 'Spitfire Audio'.
I also periodically compose soundtracks for video-games and have worked on titles such as The Stanley Parable, Portal Knights, Lost in Random as well as a few random projects such as trailer for Terraria and Minecraft and the like. You've probably also heard my music in random TV commercials at some point.
What I'm using to create
I use various bits and bobs to craft my shiz.
- Elegoo Saturn 4 Ultra, Mars 5 Ultra, Mars 4 Ultra,
- 3x Mars 3 Pro backup printers for speed,
- Elegoo ABS-like Resin 3.0,
- Sunla Water-washable grey,
- Elegoo Resin Space Grey 8k,
- Phrozen Luna curing station,
- Vallejo Model Color, Game Air, various sets,
- Iwata Eclipse HP-CS & Studio Smart Jet Pro Compressor,
- Random cheapo airbrushes for base coats,
- 3D Studio Max, ZBrush and Chitubox Pro.