Silver Ignika Book

 Finally, here it is, an old project that dates back to at least 2008. I loved the look of Ignika's mask, with its man shape and silver glow; then I thought, how cool would it be to have a book with incorporated designs of my own, mixed with Bionicle, and that's exactly what I did.

Back in the day I didn't have as much knowledge on how to get perfect symmetry, so the base design came out slightly wonky, but pretty good for a first time project.

My first desire was to make the book gold, but had no luck in finding the proper materials at the time, so settled with silver scrapbook paper instead (one day I do plan on making a gold edition ^.~). The project as a whole was extremely time consuming; first I hand drew my base design out with pencil, measuring it to fit the book size exactly (same technique applied to the spine design). I did my best to make an Ignika mask symbol with rays of energy beaming from it (went through multiple designs for a book cover idea, see below). The spine design was simply made to say BIONICLE in Matoran. Longest part was hand drawing all those Aztec looking squares on the corners of front and back cover.

You'll see in my sketch page that I had a basic theme going on. I started off with a plain cover that had no Ignika symbol (still tried making it look alien in pattern though). I then tried to mimic Bionicle themes of Karda Nui; with polygonal engraved corners, or swamp ripple back drops surrounding the Ignika symbol (a representation of the mask emerging from the swamp of Karda Nui). I then worked on a sketch of displaying the mask itself, wasn't happy with it. My final idea was to turn back to the theme of the Codrex, my first concept design (upper left corner) made to resemble the Codrex opening as Ignika emerges from inside. Finally I settled with a basic back design, spine design, and front cover (upper right corner). My base cover was inspired from the music video imagery of Karda Nui, and resembles Ignika's final moments in the Codrex as he uses his life energy to revive Mata Nui.

The last step was crazy, I glued down my silver paper to a purchased blank sketch book, then came the hard part; I wrapped my designs around the book and traced over every line with an embossing tool. When I finished my pressing and tracing, I pulled the designs off my book, and had a fully embossed silver cover. (See below for the pencil/stencil designs of my book).

It may be surprising, but I haven't put anything in this book yet ( I do have possible plans for it though). Sometime I hope to make a video on it, maybe when it actually has some contents on its pages.

Spine design

Front cover