November 2017 – Techniques of Digital Heraldry

Traceable Art Fall Update

I needed some time off after the big push to get the Book of Traceable Heraldic Art into shape for Pennsic, but have made a bit of continuing progress on it this autumn.

We’re now up over 950 pages of traceable illustrations, and should blow past a thousand pages before the end of the year. (It’s amusing to note that at the start of the year I thought a thousand pages was likely to be the end point of the project — at the current rate, we could plausibly reach two thousand somewhere in the next couple of years.)

I’m also working on a new printable “catalog” layout that allows people to easily scan through design elements at a consultation table — it packs most of the tinctures, divisions, and charges into a compact format that’s a bit over fifty pages rather than a thousand.

The catalog layout still needs some cleaning up around the edges — I’m using a Perl script to rearrange the SVGs and metadata from the original document into a series of web pages which are then converted to PDFs via JavaScript and Chrome, which seems kind of jury-rigged but so far seems to mostly work.

On Using Your Mundane Armory

A member of our province recently asked “What happens if a person with mundane arms joins the SCA? Can they use their mundane arms as SCA arms? And what happens if there’s a conflict with existing Society arms?”

The answer to the first question is found in the Administrative Handbook of the College of Arms, section III.B.7., “Armory Used by the Submitter Outside the Society,” which reads:

The Arms of The Viceroys and Vicereines of Østgarðr

As we approach the 50th anniversary of Østgarđr, and indeed of the East Kingdom — because in the beginning, Østgarđr was the East — we’ve been looking back over our history, and in keeping with that project I thought I would catalog the armorial devices of the viceroys and vicereines of Østgarđr since the earliest days. Continue reading “The Arms of The Viceroys and Vicereines of Østgarðr”

Name and Arms for Josef von Ulm

I recently consulted with our provincial seneschal to prepare a submission for a member of his household.

Sable, an eagle Or, orbed, langued, and armed argent, and on a chief Or three lozenges ployé gules.

Josef knew he wanted his arms to include an eagle as a nod to the arms of his knight, and wanted a chief with a set of three charges that would reference his hometown football team, the Steelers, and their stadium, formerly known as Three Rivers. The lozenge ployé, sometimes blazoned an “Arabic napkin,” comes directly from the team’s logo.