Resources
World Builder Projects – a somewhat outdated list of resources for world-building, but nevertheless useful.
CARTOGRAPHY & MAPPING
Mapping Worlds – excellent mapping blog by the Cartographer’s Guild forum member Clercon
Herwin Wielink’s Fantasy Cartography Blog – direct link to his tutorial post
Fantasy World Maps Blog – Rich Hart’s excellent blog; his main site is here
Reykjavik Center Map – isometric, hand-drawn map. Can be zoomed and panned.
Cartographer’s Guild – an excellent, well-run and friendly forum devoted to mapping (primarily fantasy/sci-fi). Includes a generous number of tutorials, tips, tricks, and resources. Forum <- direct link
* Assorted Tips and Tricks (from cartographer’s guild forums). A large collection of various short tips.
Polygonal Map Generation – this is a direct link to a “polygonal map generator”. It’s probably the most useful, interesting, and helpful tool I’ve come across in generating a good, solid island base to work with. The explanation of who wrote the program, why, and how can be found here
“Cronodon” – an interesting website about a fictional world, described as being published/owned by a company called “BotRejectsInc”. The planet itself is called Cronodon. I was most interested in their page about the Internal Structure of Cities. ** SITE LAST UPDATED JAN 2011 **
HSU* Library’s list of “Unusual and Imaginary Maps” – a resource list of both online and print materials featuring unusual and imaginary maps. * Humboldt State University
Map Scale & Raster Resolution – a direct link to a blog post on Esri’s blog (creators of ArcGIS, CityEngine, etc.) discussing map scale for maps that use imaginary data. ** TECHNICAL **
Domesday Map – fascinating look at London from the old Domesday book. Select or search for a location, and they provide the information from the book about that location. Locations are marked on the map; samples from the actual book pages are given as images. Refresh for random location
Carfree City Design – the author of this “index” has also published 2 books, 1 of them a “manual” on designing cities that do not rely on cars. The link is to a “Sketchbook Draft” that, through text and photos, describes the various elements of carfree cities.
3D walkthroughs – beautiful images of 3D floor plans. ** This is a company website, not a gallery.
ART & DESIGN
SketchUp Tips – phenomenal (wordpress!) blog devoted to making things look good in SketchUp. Covers all sorts of projects, basic to complex, in simple detail that’s understandable and informative.
Alex Hogrefe’s Tutorials – a direct link to Alex Hogrefe’s SketchUp and Kerkythea tutorials (+ Photoshop, here and there). Excellent architectural rendering videos, with well-done commentary and instructions.
Charles Liu – concept artist
ID sketching -blog featuring industrial design (and related)
Matt Grandin – interesting portfolio blog (of sorts) featuring various subjects ranging from industrial design to fashion photography. Not sure when the last update was, but interesting work.
Core 77 – fantastic, interesting blog about Design. Their post about “Designing the Modern Atlas” is particularly interesting.
OTHER REFERENCE
The Enchanted Doll – Marina Bychkova’s site featuring her handmade ball-jointed dolls. *NUDITY*
Steampunk Costume – featuring photographs of actual steampunk clothing, (usually) for people.
Cookpad – Japanese (homestyle) recipes. I believe they’re posted by members of the site, actually.
Japanese Emoticons – excellent collection of emoticons (created with keyboard characters)
City of Steam – fantastic looking steampunk MMORPG set for alpha testing in mid-July 2012 (update pending).
Blogs I like
Caenwyr – Beautiful photography, and fun posts. Nice theme, too ^-^
Conlang Blog – a regularly updated blog following the exploration of a conlang and a little bit about the people who speak the language. Very interesting, and quite recent (as of mid-late November).
Thinking Outside the Red Box Set – excellent posts about games and game design by a long-time gamer. Johnny Oneiric, the author, has enough game-playing experience to explore games and game design ideas knowledgeably, and the love of and interest in games to explore a wide variety. His post Worlds: In Praise of Permanence is particularly interesting, albeit short.
99 Colored Umbrellas 