Doodles
Mar 20, 2014 19:34:17 GMT -7
Post by Chimosa Hake on Mar 20, 2014 19:34:17 GMT -7
I've noticed there are quite a bit of artistes on the site and I decided to create my own little tidbit of creative (open minded) expression here. Sadly, I'm not a drawer, because I can't do it. I'm not a sprite-ist anymore and I've never liked paint. The one thing that I am, however, is good with computers. So I picked up digital (fantasy) cartography. I've always liked maps, what they represent and the power a well made map gives someone. I've made some (really bad) maps over the years, I've been doing this now on and off for about two years now and I like to think I've improved at least a little bit in that time.
I'm specialized in large scale maps for kingdoms, continents or even entire worlds. Small time maps like cities or minor provinces make things difficult for me and I don't understand why. My interior maps are also pretty decent if I know what I'm going for in the end. Below you'll find some examples of various size and skill that I've made so far.
(Edit: It seems like the maps don't show in their full scale. If anyone knows of a good host for pictures like these that shows them at full scale, that would be nice.)
First off, a very quick map I made for my thread with Gabriella. It was just an idea that came up while writing things out and I had to get it on 'paper'. It took about 5 minutes to make. It's just a scratch map so there's a lot of details missing from it still. Not sure if I'll update it at the end of the thread.
Just finished this one, also the reason why I wanted to create this post. It's a map of Hake's beloved Shimotsuke based on a whole myriad of information that I could gather. (There is surprisingly little information in English on the net for Japan 1560.) I did find this, which is amazing, but all in Japanese and about 300 years, give or take a decade or two, too late. But beautiful none the less. Very interesting site as well. So, in the end I (ab)used Google maps to come up with the "lay of the land" and bastardized it by a good 500 years in order to get the map that I think would have fit well in with the Shimotsuke of that era. This is not a real map, it is by all accounts a fictional creation based on my imagination.
Something else entirely. A house I built and decorated for an old magic character I had once created. He didn't last long past the finishing of this map but I had fun with him because he was absolutely horrible for other people to RP with due to his inability to want to remember anything besides magical theories and skills.
And last but definitely not least, a map that, although not part of anything Sengoku related, is the best piece of cartography I've created so far. It's for a different RP site which I'm helping out on but I just wanted to show it to you because of how epic it is (imo). It is a very detailed and big map so give it some time to load. I'm not sure if you can zoom in here but we'll see. The map was made on a 4000x4000 canvas and made my laptop smoke on several occasions trying to keep up with the rendering of things.
