scalenohedral crystals
Hey, Little Details! Have I got a question for you :D
So. I'm drawing a comic (graphic novel, sequential art, whatever you please to call it - I just think of it as a story I tell with pictures) and I need help with a type of crystal I came up with. It's a type of mineral with the perculiar property of making people/things do certain things (varies according to type/location mined/etc), and it makes for fun times with my main characters.
Everywhere it's appeared so far, it's been a particular shape, and I am of the opinion that it must grow that way. Some googling led me to the word "scalenohedron", and that looks like how I've been drawing it. I goog'd "scalenohedral crystals" and got some good naturally-occurring examples of the shape - rhodochrosite is a particularly fine one. However, when I then googled some of these minerals (rhodochrosite again, for example, but calcite is another), I came up with crystals in other shapes (because calcite apparently thinks it's hilarious to look like anything).
What I want to know is these things:
1) when I draw them in the mine (as I will eventually), will I need to include variously-different-shaped (that is, scalenohedral, octohedronal, prisms) crystals in one area? I would assume crystals with the same type of shape and cleavage all grow in one area - certainly when I look at them on the goog, in their own matrixes they're all of one shape (like: no cubic crystals growing on top of prisms).
2) are scalenohedrons weird? that is, should I include crystals of different shapes, or is it okay to stick with what I've got? I'm still pretty early in the comic, so I can start sticking in some different shapes if necessary, but I'd really like to keep to scalenohedrons because they're pretty :D
3) Is there anything else you-the-geologist think I-the-writer/artist should keep in mind? I like geology and minerals a lot (♥ the rocks & minerals section in the NMNH), but I don't know what else I should automatically know about how these guys grow or form that would be obvious to a geology buff. Can you tell me if you think I'm missing anything?
Aaaand that's pretty much it. Thanks in advance for any help you guys can offer!
So. I'm drawing a comic (graphic novel, sequential art, whatever you please to call it - I just think of it as a story I tell with pictures) and I need help with a type of crystal I came up with. It's a type of mineral with the perculiar property of making people/things do certain things (varies according to type/location mined/etc), and it makes for fun times with my main characters.
Everywhere it's appeared so far, it's been a particular shape, and I am of the opinion that it must grow that way. Some googling led me to the word "scalenohedron", and that looks like how I've been drawing it. I goog'd "scalenohedral crystals" and got some good naturally-occurring examples of the shape - rhodochrosite is a particularly fine one. However, when I then googled some of these minerals (rhodochrosite again, for example, but calcite is another), I came up with crystals in other shapes (because calcite apparently thinks it's hilarious to look like anything).
What I want to know is these things:
1) when I draw them in the mine (as I will eventually), will I need to include variously-different-shaped (that is, scalenohedral, octohedronal, prisms) crystals in one area? I would assume crystals with the same type of shape and cleavage all grow in one area - certainly when I look at them on the goog, in their own matrixes they're all of one shape (like: no cubic crystals growing on top of prisms).
2) are scalenohedrons weird? that is, should I include crystals of different shapes, or is it okay to stick with what I've got? I'm still pretty early in the comic, so I can start sticking in some different shapes if necessary, but I'd really like to keep to scalenohedrons because they're pretty :D
3) Is there anything else you-the-geologist think I-the-writer/artist should keep in mind? I like geology and minerals a lot (♥ the rocks & minerals section in the NMNH), but I don't know what else I should automatically know about how these guys grow or form that would be obvious to a geology buff. Can you tell me if you think I'm missing anything?
Aaaand that's pretty much it. Thanks in advance for any help you guys can offer!