Can digitally painted maps be called handmade?

[AdventureDepot]

Can digitally painted maps be called Handmade/Hand drawn?

Spin off questions from the question above could also be interesting to discuss. Like,
how do we tag and differentiate traditional pen&paper from digital? Or does no one care to?

[Mouse]

The way I see it, you can call the method of producing a map whatever you like - it doesn't change a single pixel of the map. If you like a map, why worry about the name or nature of the method - unless you want to learn how to do it yourself?

Its not the tool or method that makes a map, but the mapper - whether it is mapped by mouse, stylus, pen or pencil

[AdventureDepot]

...whether it is mapped by mouse or...

Most prefer mouse in this guild I bet

'Mouse made' is the new term to replace 'Hand made'

I think we are closer to a paradigm shift already

[Falconius]

I agree with what Mouse says, but it seems she is answering a different question.

Goods produced digitally simply cannot be called handmade. It doesn't fit the description, there are just too many tools between you and the work. If I buy a "handmade" dodad, and find out later, well no, it was digitally sculpted, and then printed, that means I was swindled. The reason tools are so useful, and that the computer is the epitome of tools, is because they make things faster easier and more precise to do. How they do that is by removing hands from the equation. Anyhow that's my thoughts on the label of handmade.

That said all I really care about is the finished work, whatever it takes to get it there is irrelevant. Different methods do however create different meanings to the end piece, and so if such hand made methods are required to achieve the desired meaning then that is a requirement of the work.

[Kellerica]

While I do concur with Falconius that something done digitally doesn't truly count as 'handmade', I am a bit torn on what I should call the kind of digital maps seen often on this site, my own included. I do work with digital software, yes, but I do so with a Cintiq and a stylus pen. Every line you see in my maps is done freehand (and I'm going to guess that's true for quite a number of fellow Guild members as well)... so in that way I am sort of tempted to still call them handmade, even though it's nothing close to actually handmade maps made with on physical paper with actual pencils and such.

I think our brilliant Maxime Plasse usually refers to his maps being "digitally hand-painted", and I think that's quite on point, as far as I'm concerned.

[Falconius]

Yes the problem with saying "digitally made" is that it obscures the work gone into it. People think it just gets done by magic if the word digital comes into play. Need to coin a term more specific to the situation that works to actually reflect the effort put into whilst avoiding the cooption of terms alien to the truth of it.

[silk186]

You could go with bespoke, personalized, individually designed, one of a kind, created by the artist, the artist rendition of.
Hand made is more about hand crafts, crafted by hand with tools. Digital works are created, designed, produced and printed.

The issue of hand made is that even if an artist produces and sells 20 items of the same design they are all unique.
Digital art, once designed can be mass produced which it the antithesis of hand made.

[AdventureDepot]

Good replies. But was also a fun question to throw at you all.

And Silk also provided examples of positive descriptions one can use instead as tags also. Great! Just what I needed

Edit: An alternative is the word 'Painted' without mentioning the word digital. Which might be a tag that will increase the value on the digital map in the eyes of commoners without being a lie. What do you guys think of that?

[silk186]

The problem of something like mouse made is that they are not all done this way.
Some are done with mouse, stylus and touch screen, Wacom Pen and Touch Tablet, or scanning in a hand drawn outline to work from.
It is more useful to have terms that incorporate all of these to avoid an overabundance of terms as they would included a broader range of digital media.

[kirkspencer]

I've got to disagree somewhat with Falconius. Not wholly, but still. There are prints - repetitive mechanical productions - that are considered "hand-made".

If I buy a table, and it was made by someone who used a router and tablesaw and powered sander and drill in the process, it gets the same label as the one made by the person who used hand-plane and frame saw and egg-beater drill: hand-made.

The point is that I don't think the use of digital tools automatically removes the label "hand-made". Though the line's a lot closer than it is for the aforementioned table and print.