apparently i havent introduced myself yet...

[vorropohaiah]

well i was searching through my threads and found out that I havent introduce myself (the thread title really wasnt misleading in any way), though I was sure I had posted one when I joined the site a few years ago.

I've been lurking here for about 2-years now shamelessly pinching tutorials left-right-and-centre and saving peoples maps to use as inspiration. I'm 28, and dreading the big 3-0 in just over a years time and have been interested in fantasy/sci-fi/art history for pretty much as long as I can remember. My interest in cartography originally stemmed from my love of worldbuilding and the desire to draw the regions I created though over the past few years i've come to appreciate cartography as an art-form and have started to build up a small library of cartographical books (i recently mentioned that i just got hold of Taschen's 550-page version of the Atlas Maior, which I'm loving reading through.

I've been steadily working on my current world (Elyden) for around 7-years now, flitting intermittently between worldbuilding, fiction, research and cartography, though i tend to get bogged down in details, meaning both my worldbuilding and cartography tend to take far longer than i want (something I want to change with the monthly challenges here...). the encyclopaedia Elyden now stands at 520,000 words, which I'm constantly tinkering with, with details like -calendars, moon cycles, mythologies, regional histories, languages, cultures, timelines etc. basically anything that takes my fancy at the time. I pre-emptively apologise for any maps i post as they'll almost all invariably be linked to the same world so i hope that other people don't find them too repetitive!

Id love to one day publish my work, preferably as a nice in-world book - basically the encyclopaedia Elyden with maps and cartography by myself. of course I'd have to finish it to do that and that's unlikely, at least for the next few decades. I've had little luck in getting my short stories published though blame that on my lack of editing and my writing style being somewhat dense (think h.p. Lovecraft, but with more purple prose). ah well, as long as I enjoy it I don't mind (my girlfriend doesnt though... for some reason she thinks I spent too much time in this imaginary world of mine!).

anyway, a pretty long-winded way of saying hello!

[Lyandra]

Well, what can I say vorropohaiah? Welcome!
I wish you good luck with your worldbuilding project and a little more understanding from your girlfriend.^^
On a sidenote: I've got to save some cash and get myself Atlas Maior too... Since I love cities so much I invested in the Braun's and Hogenberg's Cities of the World first (love that book!). But like I said, going through Atlas Maior in a bookshop was a pleasure, though it's not the same as owning the actual thing, is it?^^

[arsheesh]

Nice to see you made it official Vorropohaiah. Wow, sounds like a massive project! Out of curiosity, are you using any online resources to keep track of the encyclopedic info for your world? If not, I'd recommend having a look at the Obsidian Portal. It's a RPG wiki site that allows you to create your own wiki-based sites to record info for your campaigns and or campaign settings. I know some authors (who don't role play) are also using it to keep track of the info on their world. I've been creating my own world of Eriond as an RPG campaign setting now for several years. If you want to get a feel for what you can do with the site, have a look at my site and other popular sites on the Portal. While I'm not currently working on the setting, or role playing (I'm busy writing a dissertation), when I was it was a tremendous help.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh