While I took the easy route and use a picture of Vaubaun for my blog picture, I've noticed some really involved and lovely creative flags and heraldry on other blogs.
I hadn't really paid that much attention before, but Jim (is that double o 6?) who is one of those nice guys who actually pays attention to my blather, has a really nice one. It caught my eye when I was checking up on the situation in Beerstein today.
Alas, I can't remember which country he creates (though I'm positive I've a link to it under the "numinous nations" side bar!).
It caused me to think, how do these guys go about constructing their flags and where do they steal their .... uh, where do they get their inspiration?
I wouldn't mind hearing from a few of you about yours!!!
Regard,
Arthur
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7 comments:
Arthur,
Well, my nickname is "Bluebear" so I started with a blue bear in a square SYW-style flag and then added maple leafs in each corner (because I'm in Canada) . . . making them blue to match the bear.
I did this in a graphics program and it was done.
-- Bluebear Jeff
PS, the Saxe-Bearstein "national flag" is the same only with the bear and leafs in red instead of blue -- to match their red uniforms.
Several of the Imagi-nation gang have used this site to make their flags.
http://www.imagineimage.org/flgen/flmain.htm
"Alas, I can't remember which country he creates ": hope you'll post its name for our references!
David of Tipplebruder recently did excellent flags for several Imagi-Nations, 'materializing' marvelously their designers' ideas: re. Pangea and Herrschaden.
The Pangaean flags, at least for the infantry, appear basically as variations on the Prussian ones, with different heraldic beasts -if I remember well, another country there uses a 'monkey rampant' (memory of the 'mouse rampant' of Grand Fenwick?).
Herrschaden can be seen as a (parodic) 'German Democratic Republic by Lace Wars times': the 'all seeing eye', so fitting for az dictatorship, was added to the masonic symbols already present in the GDR heraldry.
PS: also, the Aschenbach 'national flag' is basically an 'archetypal' 18th C. Prussian infantry flag displaying a stag instead of an eagle.
Btw, at least in France, the symbols traditionally associated with cuckolds are stag antlers and the color yellow: thus 'a stag head gold' (on a vert field, in remembrance of Lady Chatterley?) should be used with some caution...
For my flags I found heraldic beasts I liked, in books and online. I get a digital copy (scanned from the books or saved from the websites), place it in a graphics program like Adobe Illustrator and auto trace it. Then I can color in the outlines and interiors as well as the flag backgrounds (which are mostly drawn as simple graphic shapes for crosses, checkered patterns, etc.). I used some flags Bluebear Jeff posted long ago as the basis for the shape/background of other flags.
You could probably do something very similar in a program like MS Paint, without creating vector versions of the heraldic bits.
So the main trick is just finding bits you want to put on your flags. I don't remember which sites I found stuff on; I reached them by "gogling" for heraldry and such.
I like to dream up flag designs, bearing in mind heraldic conventions. But my Wholly Romantic Empire flags are really just copies of Austrian Imperial (I think the double-headed eagle just rocks), Prussian and Russian (although the Grand Duchy uses a White Maltese cross on a green background, with an orange roundel in the centre upon which is a black eagle - something resembling what the Russians settled on late in the Napoleonic Wars). For Ursaminor I settled on a simple azure field, with an 'Ursus Theodorus' (teddy bear) or displayed, the whole ith a bordure of 'or' and 'gules' in some design (checky, flames, etc.). Probably my best flags went to Jotun-Erbsten: varying colours - green, yellow, red, but with a central roundel argent featuring a cat, passant guardant, sable.
All were made out of paper, drawn in ink, and coloured with the felt pens you use for overhead projection transparencies.
I do, however, admire the imaginative flags and escutcheons on display in many of the blogs I now follow...
Cheers,
Ion
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