Can digitally painted maps be called handmade?

[Voolf]

Digital art is like a different style for artist, but it still can be hand made. If someone uses tablet, or even a mouse to draw, the person still uses personal skills. As long as you use your hand (no matter tool) to actually draw the strokes etc. its hand-made for me.

Now there is a digital art that is created procedurally. Maps also. Those are made by series of filters where one dont have do draw anyting by hand. Those are not hand-made imo.

Every map drew digitally using tablet is unique same as traditional, because person dont use premade brushes for mountains etc. Every single mountain is drew anew. That makes map unique. Though it can be very simmilar in style its still unique. Same as traditional. The only difference? Tool.

In a gist, everyting that is premade, or procedural is not hand-made, regardless its digital or not.

[Falconius]

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.

Prints that are hand made are assumed to use a plate that was hand carved. Or alternatively hand printed means they use a manual press and do the ink layout etc. by hand for each copy. With the woodworker every piece of wood is shaped with his hands on it (for the most part, but his hands are directly involved with every process). Digital work is all virtual, you can't lay your hands on it until some machine makes a copy of it. If that same table was carved by CNC you can't claim it was hand made, even though some guy had to sit there and make a model of it and plan it and set up the machine to carve it, and to fit the pieces. If you can't physically lay hands on what it is you are making, I can't see how one can make the claim it is hand made.

[Voolf]

If you can't physically lay hands on what it is you are making, I can't see how one can make the claim it is hand made.

Respectfully i have to disagree with you Falconius too. I think you way overinterpet the work handmade. It just mean made by hand rather than machine. If you push a button and a machine will do all the work for you its obviously not handmade. In digital art the machine is PC. If you take a tool (software) like a map generator and push a button, this equals previously mentined machine, not handmade.

That beeing said, there is ditigal art that is made BY HAND. People DO LAY HANDS on a tablets and draw. The tablet translate your drawing skills into digital world. How can you say it is not handmade? Those digital maps would never exist, if artist would not draw them using ther drawing skills. Tablet in this case is a faster way to put your work into digital space. It is same as you draw on piece of paper and then scan it, you just skip the scanning phase by drawing directly "on pc".

[Falconius]

One shouldn't confuse the work involved with the medium involved. Working in clay or pen and paper is different than working with voxels/polygons or pixels and layers. Real life doesn't come with an undo button, or a symmetry button, or copy, or paste, or line tools or all the myriad of other software tools that make using a computer so valuable. What I meant by laying your hands on your work was laying your hands on the product itself as it's made. You can touch your tablet all you want or your monitor, but you can't lay hands on your map, or whatever it is you are making, until some machine makes it. I am not arguing about the value of work involved, as I said earlier whatever it takes to get the work done is largely irrelevant, it finished product that matters to my mind. Do I care that J. Edward creates amazing maps by drawing them on a computer, or by drawing them by hand on paper? Or do I just care that he makes amazing maps?

However when people use the term handmade they are saying something about the process and people are making some assumptions based on their perception of that process. It is at best misleading and at worst an outright falsehood to claim that something is, what it actually isn't.

[Voolf]

One shouldn't confuse the work involved with the medium involved. Working in clay or pen and paper is different than working with voxels/polygons or pixels and layers. Real life doesn't come with an undo button, or a symmetry button, or copy, or paste, or line tools or all the myriad of other software tools that make using a computer so valuable. What I meant by laying your hands on your work was laying your hands on the product itself as it's made. You can touch your tablet all you want or your monitor, but you can't lay hands on your map, or whatever it is you are making, until some machine makes it. I am not arguing about the value of work involved, as I said earlier whatever it takes to get the work done is largely irrelevant, it finished product that matters to my mind. Do I care that J. Edward creates amazing maps by drawing them on a computer, or by drawing them by hand on paper? Or do I just care that he makes amazing maps?

However when people use the term handmade they are saying something about the process and people are making some assumptions based on their perception of that process. It is at best misleading and at worst an outright falsehood to claim that something is, what it actually isn't.

Well we have to agree to disagree on that matter. I understand you point of view, though still stand with my opinion. It is true there are a lot of tools in pc software that helps you draw, but you must realize that there are people who draw using basic brushes on one layer creating amaizing arts. How different is using tablet instead of pen (or regular brush), and watch screen instead of regular canvas? It is not different at all. If someting is hadmade it means one uses his skills to produce something, its completaly irrelevant whether its a sculpture, painting on the canvas or digtal paiting. its made by individual not a machine.

However when people use the term handmade they are saying something about the process and people are making some assumptions based on their perception of that process. It is at best misleading and at worst an outright falsehood to claim that something is, what it actually isn't.

I feel mislead when someone says he/she draw it and its handmade, but actually used a software like CC, Wilbur, or even PS with premade stamp brushes. Not saying those maps are worse or anything, but those kind of "placing" premade stuff is not what i would call "draw" a map.
On the other hand people who use digital way for painting on one layer can feel offended by your statement, because as you need sculptor skills to make good sculpture, you also need that digital artist skill to make arts like his/hers. Its simply not reproductive without that person skills.

[DanielHasenbos]

This is a very interesting discussion. I find the term hand-drawn very confusing, but after giving it some thought I think it can be used very broadly. Whether a piece of art is made by someone standing in front of a canvas, or someone sitting in front of a computer, they both use their hands to pick up a tool (brush and paint vs stylus and tablet) and use those tools to create the artwork. It's not the painter's hand that puts the strokes on the canvas; it's the brush and the paint that touch the canvas. The painter simply uses his hands to guide the brush (or the stylus), no matter if he works on a canvas or a computer screen. That means that both works are hand-made, they both require that the artist uses his hands to draw the piece. From this point of view the only difference is that one artwork is physically made, while the other is digitally made.

I must say that I feel very much like I'm nitpicking here. As other have said before, I don't really care what one uses to make a map, or any piece of art for that instance. What matters most is what they can make with it.

[Krieghund]

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

I would think people in this guild would only use "Mouse made" for maps actually made by the poster above you (Mouse).

I wouldn't use "hand made", I'd probably call my maps "original content".

[HadrianVI]

I think "Mouse made" is, especially here at the guild, misleading, because if one describes a map as "Mouse made Map", I would assume that Sue made the map

[Mouse]

ROFL!

Just to be confusing -

ALL my maps are 'Mouse made', but some are done on a Wacom

[damonjynx]

Well, interesting discussion.

To me, if you manually manipulate the pixels in any form of digital art, regardless of whether it's done by Sue, er sorry, a mouse, tablet, keyboard strokes or whatever, you have every right to call it hand-drawn. Your hands controlled the tool that produced the finish piece. Hand-made art is a different thing, to me that's using traditional medium, inks, pencils, paints & brushes etc. If you make art by writing code or inserting variables into someone else's code, so the art is produced primarily by automated software, that's computer generated art in my opinion.