One X-Cellent Scene: Krakoan, X-Men's mutant language
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- Опубліковано 9 чер 2024
- In this video I do a deep dive on Jonathan Hickman's Krakoan cipher, as featured in the Dawn of X relaunch of X-men universe comics, from a lettering designer's perspective. We take a look in particular at what it shares with and how it differs from real scripts for true languages.
You should also definitely check out @LindsayEllisVids video on conlangs here:
• The Constructed Langua...
0:00 Introduction
0:30 Background
1:56 Krakoan's Inspiration
2:57 Design Features
3:49 Real vs Constructed Scripts
6:43 Krakoan as Brand Illustration
8:11 Closing thoughts
Check out the One X-Cellent Scene playlist
• One X-Cellent Scene
All background music by Harris Heller - streambeats
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#OneXCellentScene #xmen #krakoan #designanalysis
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I really appreciate the clarification between a constructed language and a cipher! As a conlanger, I live for the moments where I tell people about the world beyond simple ciphers.
In response to your questions at the end of the video, I'd love a breakdown of Simlish! Though something always felt like it's REALLY made up on-the-fly rather than actually a sensical language with a set of rules.
Also, I love how you end every video with a custom "This has been me " rather than the same goodbye line every time, a really fresh approach and I'm not sure why more people don't do that.
That's fun. How about an analysis of the "typography" of the aliens from Arrival?
My perception of the Krakoan 'Language' is that the cipher that serves as a substitutional alphabet is meant to be different enough for us to observe an aesthetically different look but at the same time allow us to read it with little effort. While the alphabet may be all we see as the reader, the implication is that it is also different in grammar, syntax, vocabulary, all of that. But if a literal con lang was created to be Krakoan a much much smaller amount of people would bother to learn it. For the purposes of the comic it is simple enough to read with a chart, decipher using clues, or learn to outright read. It gives just enough of a difference to make it remind us in issue after issue that the Krakoans are developing their own culture. The reader just has to imagine the rest of Krakoan as being there. There are also subtle hints that the language is more than just the cipher and has nuances we as the reader are not fully aware of. An example is Apocalypse wanting to be referred to as --[A]-- this is not part of the Krakoan alphabet and even if it was it's essentially a letter in brackets. He spoke that symbol and the person he spoke to understood and acknowledged they could pronounce that. So that was an example of a spoken word not just ciphered out. There are a number of similar symbols that are just written out but are of a similar nature usually in just basic brackets rather than Apocalypses more decorative brackets. [4] for the fantastic four, a butterfly in brakets for Psyloch, a diamond in brackets for Sinister, an orchid in brackets for the Orchid organization. --[X]-- for Xavier. These can all be examples of proper names or words for which we don't know the pronunciation but to a Krakoan with the language telepathicly imprinted on every mutant mind, the ever growing language, Krakoan specific names are understood by them and again as readers we have to imagine those but since they are often pictographic or use an english letter associated with that character we can 'read' it without reading it. It's all a very nice design element that gives just enough but doesn't over complicate it for readers.
I remember playing the old Commander Keen games way back in the ancient times, which also had an "alien" alphabet (a cipher) with symbols corresponding to the latin alphabet and the words and phrases being regular English written in that cipher, and I spent a lot of time figuring out the alphabet on my own from scratch basically. Now of course one could just google it, but this was long before www was common
How did they use the font in the comics?
The quality of taking a long time to write could suit a culture where only important sentences are printed.
It feels like Krakoan could exist as a language painted onto catacomb walls, tattooed onto some old mutant’s back, or carved into the base of a statue (like your example of early Hangul).
Comics: "Beyond human comprehension."
Reality: *A cypher anyone with 2 minutes of spare time can easily get.*
I love comics and such but sometimes, BOY do they oversell themselves and take themselves too seriously sometimes. XD Like, with that qualifier, I was expecting it to be just random symbols but I guess they did this to make the readers feel "smart" or "special" or something? If you're going for "beyond human comprehension", maybe at the VERY LEAST, make this more complex than a direct cypher like most come up with with their friends before elementary?"
They mean comprehension as actually speaking yes you can translate but actually understanding and speaking takes it being downloaded shadowcat had a hard time speaking it cause she still didn’t get it downloaded
Fun fact: The X-men comics canonically take part in the same universe as Ace Combat.
i need a source that's too good to be true
Wait, what? xD
would love a fake letter rundown as a krakoan palate cleanser!
Cheers Phil! I might look at something from the fantasy arena with more roots in calligraphy next time? Sci Fi and fantasy seem to be the dominant genres, with two quite distinct aesthetics and typical tropes.
By this point I’ve watched like five of your videos back to back, and subscribed after the first one. I had no idea I had any interest in fonts and typography, but I really can’t stop watching this. You should have more viewers and more subscribers.
As someone who made his own script out of complete boredom, this is very interesting! Overall, huge fan of your content, and I've lost track of how many videos of yours I've watched back-to-back right now-
I'd love more looks into constructed scripts! It may also be interesting to look into fonts for scripts other than the latin alphabet. like, do thai fonts have a similar division to serif - san-serif?
I know that the Chinese Han Logography and its Japanese and Korean variants have a distinction between serif typefaces, most notably “Ming” typefaces which emulate handwritten calligraphic brush-strokes, and sans-serif typefaces, mosted importantly a style called “Gothic” with equal stroke widths throughout the character. I’d assume there are similar distinctions in lots of systems, as serifs occur “naturally” in lots of handwritten letterforms based on the way the writing implement has to move to produce said letterform, but rarely convey any important linguistic information so can be eliminated for style or legibility as soon as the medium allows.
Krakoan is definitely better than a lot of conscripts I've seen, but that's a very low bar. There's a little awkward same-y-ness between the glyphs, but no worse than English (except for m vs. n
I would love more constructed script videos!
I'd love to see more videos breaking down the 'tells' of other con-langs - I feel like we hear a lot about them (well, I do as someone who's interested in linguistics related content) but I'm always surprised at how little this is touched on. Really enjoyed this!
Wonderful analysis, I especially enjoyed those little details explaining it's tell as a constructed script!
Great video as always! I love the reference to Lindsay Ellis' work so people ca also watch a video constructed languages.
Keep it up!
lovely video! just found out about your channel, but learned a whole lot just from the first 2 videos, all the geomancy and trigram stuff is thurley interesting. keep up the good work!
Heck, just developing my own cipher for handwriting went through many iterations in the first years (dots, strokes and triangles became all small strokes for instance, shapes which were distinct when I drew them in a grid were hard to discern on a piece of paper and were changed, etc). So as you say nothing with use by multiple people would last even a few years with such annoyances, let alone millennia.
I love this video and I'm always curious regarding both conlangs and constructed writing systems.
Looks beautiful!
Krakoan looks quite a bit like Mayan numerals.
Also, I think krakoan may be hard to write by hand because the stroke count is relatively high for symbols that mostly only convey one phoneme, like the Latin Script. I don't know if the Krakoan language uses a phonemic script, a syllabic script, ideograms, or something else in-world, though.
Very cool design analysis for this script! I'd love it if you took a look at the Vorin women's script from Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive series.
Nice video
I'd like to suggest the Scripts used in Warframe if another one of these videos comes up. The game has some signs of a language interspersed with English, but for the most part, each major faction has their own script. What do you think about such combination?
Another comic book font I'd be interested in a run-down of is Interlac from the DC comics! It's a novel script for English, meant to be a future universal language for a variety of species including humans, but I've always been struck by how odd it would be to write and read due to the similarities between certain letterforms. Then again, writing is a technology, not an inbuilt feature of language-maybe handwriting is extinct in the 3000s?
Krakoan evokes nothing to a trying-to-just-get-on-with-life simpleton like me, but nice to have found you again Linus!
As usual, your videos
Don't be a stranger : )
Ingrid
Ingrid! Lovely to see you here ☺️
Krakoan could be written a lot easier with few strokes if it were painted with brush rather than a narrow pen like you were trying to do.
A conscript which is a mere cypher for the Latin alphabet is really not that interesting to me as a script, though I suppose that it is interesting as graphic design.
@@Liggliluff Such a simple set of steps!
Please please do a video on Phyrexian - the constructed language from Magic: The Gathering!
Krakoan reminds me of Marain from the Banks Culture books.
lol id LOVE a video on simlish, i had no idea they had their own alphabet
Kinda reminds me of the hymnos front from Ar Tonelico.
what about the languages/scripts from the Myst games?
What's your opinion on Aurebesh?
2:54 fin.
Isn't there monowidth wester glyph fonts?
Might be easier to write if you use a larger stroke - like a paintbrush sort of thing. The lines are thick and cannot be interpreted as thinner lines, but that isn't necessarily problematic;
After all, humans wrote with things like a brush before we ever picked up a Pen. A Pen/Pencil are not the only tools for writing; simply ones that allow us to write small and quick.
Wow, this video has criminally few views.
What about the standard galactic alphabet? It's used on Minecraft's enchanting tables
if goal is to separate mutants from humans, great job. For me I would prefer the integration and co harmony of both, which after 40 years still same story both in comic and real life, so the trajectory of own language leads to greater divide
I agree with most of what you said, but when you tried to wipe with it you treated it as a graphic rather than a script Notable drawing boxes where it would likely be a stroke.
ah, yes, the hula hoop ui, my favorite alphabet
I wonder if it's easier to write with a brush than a ballpoint pen...
Ugh, I find Ciphers so boring. They feel so unnatural once you get past the pure visual design aspect. No other civilization would end up with a system that (close to) perfectly matches the latin alphabet. I enjoy more sophisticated writing systems that have thought put into their use rather than just their appearance.
It's ok, not fantastic imo
It's not a language. It's a dumb code