Amharic characters

[larsenwork]

Draft of my first fidel...trying to keep it gidole style while staying true to the ge'ez script

[larsenwork]

[larsenwork]

still fine tuning my name before creating too many characters

[rkassa]

great work! looking forward to seeing more fidel.

[auralarch]

Nice! Clean lines, good shapes... It's always important to keep in mind the sometimes subtle details which differentiate some of the glyphs. For instance, it might be a good idea to slightly increase the extender on top of ስ to avoid confusion with ሰ. ለ can also get mixed up with those in some fonts; although your style template seems likely to avoid that. And it may be that in actuality your ስ is sufficiently distinct from ሰ...

BTW, the background photo looks uncannily similar one that could've been taken from our backyard in Ethiopia!

[auralarch]

I am somewhat torn regarding the harmonization with the Latin glyphs though....
Essentially and functionally the little flags/leaves of the Ethiopic script are basically serifs and terminals. The Latin glyphs are obviously free of those features. Even though they seem like a fundamental aspect of the script, they are not included in typical handwritten Amharic (of course individual styles vary, but they are not "taught" to be written as anything other than hooks, loops, extensions or simple horizontal extrusions.
I would encourage to experiment with using the conventions and features of the Latin character set (hooks, tails, etc.) to the extent feasible without sacrificing basic character forms – that is the most important aspect to keeping the characters easily identifiable; keeping the 'legibility' at good levels.

My personal feeling is: if you're not going to produce a genuine, traditional leaf like you see in Abyssinica; do something else entirely... leave it as something like the arm of an "r" the hook of an "f" or "j" or the arm of an "F". That seems like it would fit in better the rest of the font anyway.

For the base of the ደ families try a "[" turned sideways, maybe a bit narrower and the legs a bit longer. As long as you remain true to the distinctive, characteric shapes of the important glyphs, you'll be OK.

The Latin characters are composed of a fairly minimal set of core shapes/elements.
Lines are basically, generally straight, circular or part of a circle or transitioning and a fairly steady rate between straight line and circle. The straight lines are almost all vertical, with a few exceptions of angled lines which are all about the same angle degrees from vertical.
The attempting to stick to the features of Latin letters would too seriously sacrifice crucial elements of the Ethiopic characters; but you can, and probably should make some compromises to maintain harmony.
Experimentation will be your guide. Try lots of slightly different variations of a character, if one isn't an obvious winner, leave them all and come back for a look in a day or two. Not that one will magically look better, but that with a fresh eye you may identify elements that do or don't work...

[biniama]

Hi Larsen. I landed on your medium story while searching for new Amharic fonts. How is it going? Are you finished working on the font?