Sunday, February 8, 2015
The Mimeoplasm
Here is the nearly finished Mimeoplasm (we still need to erase some of the penciled guidelines and cut it out). Although I had some worries about my ability to translate the text, I found some of my old notes for some of the other Egyptian cards I had done and was able to translate the text of the Mimeoplasm into Middle Egyptian. Funny story, I could not find an equivalent for the "ooze" creature type, so I used "mud" instead. The card art depicts Ammut, the monster goddess, who is part lion, part hippo, and part crocodile, and who devoured the hearts of the dead during afterlife judgment, if they were evil. The text behind the goddess is the beginning of Spell 125 of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Veronica did most of the art and text transcription. I translated and found appropriate artistic parallels. Hope you like it!
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This is sweet! The Egyptian ones you guys made have been really cool and I like that Phil's commanders have been kinda abstract. If I'm not mistaken the Kikki Jikki card had a scale on it too... What did that symbolize in ancient times? Like judgement a la judgement from odyssey block?
ReplyDeleteAlso mud reminds me of the Pokemon Muk.
Part of the abstractness of Phil's commanders has to do with them being "monsters" or at least not humans. There wasn't a scale in the Kikki Jikki art, but I can see why you might remember that, as we depicted Kikki Jikki holding his arms out horizontally to copy a goat. So it kind of looked like a scale. The scale did symbolize judgment just like in Odyssey block. The imagery comes from the Egyptian book of the dead, where a person's heart was weighed against the Ma'at feather, which represented truth and balance. If the person's heart weighed the same or less than the feather (because of their virtuous life) they got to go to a good afterlife. If their heart was heavier, Ammut "the devourer" would eat their heart. Here I replaced the heart and feather, with the two creatures that the Mimeoplasm was to devour from the graveyard, a T-rex and a hippo. I choose a hippo, because I could never tell what that second creature depicted in the art was supposed to be, and hippos are cool and appear in Egyptian art. Plus, Ammut is already part Hippo and part crocodile (which I saw as a stand-in for T-rex).
ReplyDeleteIn retrospect, maybe I should have just transliterated ooze instead of trying to translate it. Or, better yet, just went with Legendary Creature - Muk.
This is so cool!! I love the part hippo, part lion, part crocodile. That is even better than having a t-rex head for an arm (although maybe not as cool as having t-rex arms). I love the way the letters/words all look and the fact that it is secretly mud. I just imagine someone stepping on the mimeoplasm and it gets mad and turns into Ammut and then you're dead.
ReplyDeleteCan't wait to get these in my dirt chocolate-stained sausage fingers. (I have finger issues).
I agree. Hippos are cool. Even Jaded Baby would approve.
ReplyDeleteGlad you like it! I liked how it turned out. Veronica did a great job with the art, as usual. Hippos are cool. I feel proud to have gained the approval of Jaded Baby (he doesn't even believe in the sun...that's hardcore). My life is now complete.
ReplyDeletePS - I always manage to get chocolate on my fingers too. Usually it happens in such a way that I don't realize it until I've managed to get stains on several papers/books/keyboards.
ReplyDeletePPS - I got Tommy's request, Oathsworn Giant. I'm going to try something different for his. Hopefully, I'll be able to finish that next weekend, although it depends on the cooperation of my local hardware store.