World Building Blog

GENERAL UPDATE

Well, it’s one of those times. “Those times” being when “I’ve been struggling with getting any art, design, ‘or anything, really’ done because I’m a total perfectionist and it’s so much easier to just spend forever researching +/- 37 different things simultaneously” (ranging, of course, from how pteradons fly to the best way to scientifically (and most painfully) determine exactly where in a particular binary star system the life zone – a.k.a habitable zone or Goldilocks zone – would fall).

---

WORLDS OF SAND

Fortunately, I’ve been insanely fortunate enough to be selected as a finalist-interviewee – a writing position – for an indie game company currently working on their first big project, which happens to be based on some of my favorite themes/genres, movies, game-types, etc. The company is Starboard Games L.L.C. (links tp FB page) and the game is called INT (short for Interstellar). While this blog has been primarily about art, design, and more “visual-creative” projects, I’ve been world building – and creating languages – for years now (almost a decade, and that’s not counting the totally-uneducated attempts I made back in middle school).

In the interest of not only continuing to explore those areas of interest but also to get all the research I’ve done and ideas I’ve been exploring out there to share and discuss with other people, I’ve decided that now is a great time to start a blog specifically for world-building and all that goes into that (or can, at least)! Taking the first step applying for this writing job has been a great push forward towards the blog, but whatever happens with the job itself – all power to them, the idea sounds great – I’m looking forward to writing again. Well, writing in a “public forum” and getting feedback and having discussions, anyway. All the writing I’ve been doing recently has been kept … under wraps, so to speak.

Perhaps I’ve reached a kind of “critical mass” in terms of the amount of information I’ve amassed. Now it’s time to actually make use of it all, even if I end up just sharing it and helping others use it for their own epic ends.

 

Therafim

UPDATE (finally)

Well, it certainly took me long enough (far too long) to update this map. Not even the holidays or my part time job starting up again can really justify how long it’s taken me to get this far; all I can say is that it hasn’t been easy. Campaign Cartographer was difficult enough to get a handle on, and it has quickly become my single most disliked software at least in regards to cartography. That being said, I think I can be reasonably proud of how this map is turning out, and I’m optimistic about finishing it up. So – here’s what I’ve managed to get done so far, with a close-up shot of one of the most recently finished sections to show the resolution of the final image. Note that the full world map image is at the full resolution and as such is a significantly large image (600 dpi, ~11″ x ~7″).

Full map, at full 600 dpi resolution; very large file, may load slowly

 

Therafim Update

*NOTE: THIS IMAGE FILE IS EXTREMELY LARGE*
(I’ve posted such a large image file in order to send the highest resolution file I have to the commissioner.)

This is another map commission I took several months ago that has, unfortunately, taken far too long to really get underway. This is, in part, due to my lack of experience with CC3 (Campaign Cartographer 3), and partly due to my regular inability to overcome any failure I experience when using the program. It’s also frustrating that I have to place symbols “front to back” and it’s exceptionally difficult to select and send anything behind something else; there isn’t even an option to bring something forward! The lack of (good) documentation is also a serious problem for me, although the video tutorials on YouTube have been pretty helpful.

Setting aside that little rant, I have, fortunately, managed to reach a point where work on this map is going fairly smoothly, if a little slowly. In the interest of ensuring nothing is just slap-dash-edly placed in an effort to get things down “somewhere”, I confess to spending a fair amount of time laying down symbols and then deleting all or most and starting over again once I get the general layout and placement the way I want it.

So far no labels, but the entire northern ‘pole’ (“Rimevast”) is complete, and as you can see I’ve added in a single city on the northeastern-most continent (“Autumn Land”); it’s supposed to be due south from the city just north on Rimevast, so I thought I’d drop it in now.

Next step is Autumn Land, followed by … whatever continent/landmass I take a shine to after that. Labels will be added last since most of them are actually fairly easy to remember.