~sirkles did this amazing thing. Click for bigger image and full details.
Just wow.
And here’s a diagram of how to read it.
Spinning Counterclockwise
Category Archives: circular gallifreyan
Exterminate
Ultimate Circle Geekiness
Appearing in /r/gallifreyan this, which is is a strong contender for geekiest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s a character sheet in circular Gallireyan for the RPG Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space by Cubicle 7:
A filled-in example, you ask? Why certainly. Here’s one about Eleven:
Adventures in Circular Gallifreyan, Part Eleventy-Eight
I’ve been learning Sherman’s Circular Gallifreyan system and am starting to get the hang of it, but I’m still seeing stuff in methodologies that don’t conform to this system. Somewhere I tripped over a post where someone was asking how to write something, and the answer was phonetic, rather than spelling based. Confusion, then something happened and I got distracted, and you know how that — hot dog. I could really go for a hot dog.
Anyway, today I found out about another system called Greencrook’s which involves some more swirly bits and series of size-sorted circles. Here’s a sample:
I was having some trouble finding the how-to for this, though.
Fandom Entanglement to the rescue! Learn Gallifreyan in 13 Easy Timelines has them all! All of them. Event the WS font. Here I found that the interaction I had tripped over was BrittanyBGood’s “Doctor’s Cot” Gallifreyan. Interesting!
Plus a link to this thought-provoking post Ten Rules for the Gallifreyan Language. It explains so much, even why The Doctor can’t usually say squishy things.
Of course it was only a matter of time before these started turning up on T-shirts:
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THE Tool for Circular Gallifreyan
If you’re writing Circular Gallifreyan using the Sherman method, you might just fall in love with this tool:
The very day I got it, my teenager had confiscated it within the hour and I had to get another one. I’m a circle drawing fiend now! All sizes. You don’t just get to do the circles that are stenciled there – there are tiny holes radiating from the 0 so you can make even bigger circles in very fine fractions of an inch. My writing has gotten much prettier as a result. Endorsement!
A Reddit Romp
If you haven’t romped through Reddit, you don’t get enough Internet time. That’s me, usually, but I did finally get the time to look and I particularly like these three subreddits:
- /r/doctorwho – Doctor Who: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy – A bit fluffy but fun. A mix of links, images, questions, theories and etc.
- /r/gallifrey – Doctor Who News and Discussion – Slightly more serious (usually) and somewhat more congenial although much deeper discussion is going on here. This is where the hard core fans are, and over-analysis is guaranteed. Mind opening.
- /r/gallifreyan – Circular Gallifreyan – Where people are sharing projects and questions as they learn to write using Circular Gallifreyan script. Really gorgeous stuff in here! Like this:
Reddit is a discussion space, so of course selective reading is a good idea. Don’t forget to have fun! If it’s not fun, you’re doing it wrong.
Fabric!
I’ve been seeing projects like this cropping up which involve fabric with Circular Gallifreyan script on, so I went looking and…
Oh.
My.
Goodness!
These are just an arbitrary few available at Spoonflower. There are jillions.
Circular Gallifreyan Locket
I can please has? Have a look at this lovely Gallifreyan locket!
Lots more wonderful Time Lord goodies at this Etsy shop.
How to Write Circular Gallifreyan
I’ve noticed a rash of people writing things in Circular Gallifreyan lately (like the above sample from this Reddit post), which caught my attention immediately because the last five times I’ve tried to find out how to do it, there’s been nothing. Apparently now there is something. Or a few somethings.
Here’s a Flash tool to help you and here’s a PDF (much more detail) and an introductory website by the same author. Here’s the vowel sheet mentioned in the PDF both at the author’s site and locally.
It will take me forever to learn how to read this, won’t it?
Here are some examples of words using a different version of the alphabet, but the alphabet itself isn’t given. And here’s another set without the alphabet reference.
Air!
Wow, I haven’t come up for air for some time. Been downloading HD episodes like a fiend and gathering the samples for the experiments mentioned earlier. But hey, my T-shirt arrived today!
It’s not currently available, but there’s a vote button to bring it back.
Update: It’s now available at RedBubble.
So, these HD episodes look fantastic! I cannot wait to get some of the blurrier episodes redone. For some of the (visually) darker episodes like The Almost People, there’s a tradeoff: there’s quite a lot of speckling in the dark areas, but I don’t think that’s as bad as the rampant blur in the earlier caps.
Many of these look like they’d improve in a resize. Sometimes taking down the size of an image packs the pixels a bit and makes them appear sharper, so if I capture really enormous and then resize to merely huge, a lot of speckle ought to come out. However, the tool I use for batch processing doesn’t include batch resize. I may have to just give in and buy an image editor. Paint Shop Pro used to be my big tool back in the day, but that day was so long ago it was version 7. I no longer have the install disc, and that version might not run on my netbook anyway.