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In lugnet.build.schleim, Didier Enjary wrote:
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The construction of these characters is really difficult and your regular
method is now of interest as the 1x1 brick with two studs is more widely
available. I’d like to find another way to fix the single vertical line chain
breaker problem because your L,S and T present large bars. I also like your
alternate colors trick because it follows the spirit of more details in less
space by cheating the eye.
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Oh yes, I didn’t mean they look better, just that they’re simpler. It just
means I can do the British train mark ‘L.M.S.’ using only vertical plates, so I
can fit it on a smaller engine than this one!
It can look better if you make the vertical lines two plates thick, because then
they balance out the horizontal bars. But, you can only do this with some
letters.
You may notice that the wagon in the background uses a yellow “J” in the
vertical style (forgot to mention that letter) with a red drop-shadow to the
bottom right. The whole thing is done in a 1-stud wide wall too.
Unfortunately, the alphabet for this style consists of one letter - “J” - lucky
for me!
The other thing I like about vertical letters is that you can add a shadow to
the right quite easily:
This is actually a very useful technique if you only have a few small plates in
your background colour. Most of the space is filled with the shadow colour
instead.
Of course, lettering tiles is a fairly quick way to do things too. The white
stripes on the blue engine is the hard way of doing things though.
Other schleimers might like to take a look at the split 2/3 plate SNOT on the
front of the brown carriage. See my article here:
http://www.brickish.org/bi/bi9.pdf
Jason R
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In lugnet.build.schleim, Jason J Railton wrote:
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Other schleimers might like to take a look at the split 2/3 plate SNOT on the
front of the brown carriage. See my article here:
http://www.brickish.org/bi/bi9.pdf
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Let me correct that: http://www.brickish.org/bi/bi9.pdf
The technique uses two plates on one side
of a brick, and three plates on the other.
Here are my 4-stud-vertical fonts, including all the alternatives that were cut
from the Brick Issue
#3 article. I’ve added numbers too:
I’ve provided the thin type, with some alternative character renderings. These
let you do rounder or thinner characters, depending on your preferred style and
available space.
Below them are my thicker characters, mostly made by adding 1x4 plates. These
give clearer text and often let you join one side of the SNOT lettering on a
truck through to the other side with a 4x4 or 4x6 plate.
Compare the thin and thick text styles on these two wagons:
Also, don’t think I’m cheating by adding a line to the font sample on the ‘E’
and ‘3’ characters. If you use 1x1 plates at the top (instead of a vertical 1x2
plate), the seam can enhance how readable the character is (again, see the dark
red wagon above).
If you go up a directory from the font, you’ll also see a ridiculously
complicated ‘K’ and ‘R’ design using the half-plate thickness of a 1x2-1x4
bracket. Honestly, it’s not worth going this far...
Jason R
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