December meme
Dec. 27th, 2013 05:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rustydragonfly"So an immortal from before the end is in the office. Okay. What's for lunch?" - notes excerpt.
"Though it's a little awkward when your dream guides keep on snogging." - another notes excerpt.
December 27th andpointytilly asks: Your favorite thing(s) about making maps, and the thing(s) that make you want to throw the tablet pen aside and yell CURSE YOU WHOEVER INVENTED THIS "MAPS" THING?
Favourite things: the act of drawing a map is what brings a world to life, or as close to life as you're going to get without some serious time/space manipulation that I don't have the budget for. This is part of why I love atlas style maps, even though they're rare in fantasy and wouldn't represent what maps actually look like in-universe, but they do lay out the land in such a way that I can think of it as a real, living place, and not just a story setting. When I draw a map, I imagine I can go to that place and walk around. It's the closest you can get to being there.
Not so favourite things: the lack of any decent software I've managed to find. It might exist, but I've not seen it. What my dream mapping package would give me is:
-The ability to draw directly onto a globe, instead of having to work out the projections myself, to be able to zoom in and calculate distances, and then project and export as needed.
-The ability to draw in my own style, instead of using predetermined schemes and symbols.
-The ability to draw my own landforms as I want them.
So far I've been unable to find anything that fits these specifications. The closest I've come is Fractal Terrains, and whilst the globe/projection system is everything I could ever want, it relies too heavily on generated terrain for my tastes. It does have the capability to let the user draw their own landforms, but it's ridiculously clunky and I gave up after a while on the idea of ever managing to import my existing maps into it. There's some other, very nice pieces of custom mapping software out there, but most of them assume you're drawing something in the medieval fantasy vein. So in the end, I went "sod it" and went off to do everything by hand in GIMP so I could have full control. But I still want that damn zoomable globe.
Okay, now that's over, be cool like me and go listen to this.
"Though it's a little awkward when your dream guides keep on snogging." - another notes excerpt.
December 27th and
pointytilly asks: Your favorite thing(s) about making maps, and the thing(s) that make you want to throw the tablet pen aside and yell CURSE YOU WHOEVER INVENTED THIS "MAPS" THING? Favourite things: the act of drawing a map is what brings a world to life, or as close to life as you're going to get without some serious time/space manipulation that I don't have the budget for. This is part of why I love atlas style maps, even though they're rare in fantasy and wouldn't represent what maps actually look like in-universe, but they do lay out the land in such a way that I can think of it as a real, living place, and not just a story setting. When I draw a map, I imagine I can go to that place and walk around. It's the closest you can get to being there.
Not so favourite things: the lack of any decent software I've managed to find. It might exist, but I've not seen it. What my dream mapping package would give me is:
-The ability to draw directly onto a globe, instead of having to work out the projections myself, to be able to zoom in and calculate distances, and then project and export as needed.
-The ability to draw in my own style, instead of using predetermined schemes and symbols.
-The ability to draw my own landforms as I want them.
So far I've been unable to find anything that fits these specifications. The closest I've come is Fractal Terrains, and whilst the globe/projection system is everything I could ever want, it relies too heavily on generated terrain for my tastes. It does have the capability to let the user draw their own landforms, but it's ridiculously clunky and I gave up after a while on the idea of ever managing to import my existing maps into it. There's some other, very nice pieces of custom mapping software out there, but most of them assume you're drawing something in the medieval fantasy vein. So in the end, I went "sod it" and went off to do everything by hand in GIMP so I could have full control. But I still want that damn zoomable globe.
Okay, now that's over, be cool like me and go listen to this.