Help with a "chop"

[maredudd]

My consort from the last Viceregal Tournament of Insulae Draconis has also consented to act as my consort for the first Principality Coronet Tournament.
She has presented me with a writing set which includes a blank soapstone chop. I would like to carve my own chop into the soapstone but do not know how such things should be laid out.
Can anyone either point me to a source for learning about these designs, or convert my persona name (Okitane Genjirou Moritoko) into an appropriate form for me to use.

[Yamanouchi Eidou]

do you know the kanji for it?

edit: fun fact: the japanese term for a name stamp is 'hanko'.

[Noriko]

I knew I kept this website bookmarked for a reason! (;
www.youmade.com/shufa/index.asp
You will need to know the kanji for the word in question, however.

Also a caveat: these are the Chinese seal script characters and thus the ones used in Japan (or even China during certain time periods) may differ slightly. There are probably some historical nuances that I'm afraid I am not aware of.

[solveig]

Noble Cousin!

Greetings from Solveig! Please call the things "inkan" instead of "chop". Anyway, here is the ISBN for a book on inkan carving: 4544011213. As for the letter-forms themselves. Those can be looked up in some Kanwajiten, but better still specialized dictionaries for inkan carving. This should be an example of such a dictionary: 4544012090.

[Deleted]

I found this page today, with another kanji to sealscript engine.

sca.scripts.mit.edu/inshou/

Again, you will have to know the kanji, but I found KanjiDB -

www.whiteknightlogic.net/kanjidb/search/dictsearch.php

to be very helpful.

[Noriko]

Oh hey! That site was done by one of my fellow Carolingians[1]. Yay!


[1]Greater Boston

[Saionji Shonagon]

www.chinese-tools.com/tools/seal.html gives you a variety of calligraphic styles to choose from. (I'm thinkin' Saionji Shonagon really needs to have an inkan....)