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Let's Make a Language: Day 13, How I Make Conscripts/Writing Systems Part II

When I'm making a conscript, I always begin with a hand-sketch of a few shapes that I want to include in Inkscape. Just selecting a few nouns, drawing them, taking them on a test run to see how they look evolved into their final form. I usually create multiple forms of the same letter to see which one I like best.

Here's my selection and their final cursive form.

 


This set of symbols covers Munya's entire inventory before secondary places of articulation, which I will mark with diacritics above the symbol like in this example:

 


Usually after I create a hand-drawn version of the writing system, I will then make a more official version. For Munya, I decided to do a blockier official version that may have been cut into stone, just to cover both sides.

When going about making something not hand-drawn like this, I always start with a collection of shapes and letter "parts" that I use to the best of my ability represent the hand-drawn form. I think this gives it a more cohesive style. Here are the letter parts I used to create this script.

And that's it, from these four lengths of rectangles I created an entire script. I think the next step for this writing system is creating connecting forms that flow better in the middle of words, but for now it serves its purpose.

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