Can digitally painted maps be called handmade?

[Voolf]

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

Hahaha, Sorry Sue, i imagined it. So hilarious , but I bet that art must be top-notch

[eViLe_eAgLe]

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.

I have to agree with Damon here, making a distinction between hand made and hand drawn is very important. While I would feel very.. Odd if someone were to label the maps I draw using a tablet mouse made, stating that they were hand drawn is absolutely fine; and I see no reason to not agree with it.
I don't have a huge problem with people stating digital maps are handmade, but it can be a bit misleading; especially if one were to sell them.

[Mouse]

Maybe the distinction should be as simple as possible to avoid confusion:

'Hand drawn', referring to pen and ink on paper

'Created in [insert name of software] by [insert name of person]', referring to using a mouse/tablet/touchscreen, and

'Generated in [insert name of software]', referring to maps that are drawn by software... which would include most of the maps generated in Fractal Terrains and modified by Wilbur.

So for a PS/GIMP/CC3 map using an FT/Wilbur base map, the description would be:

This map was created in [PS/GIMP/CC3] by [name of person], using a base map generated in [Fractal Terrains/Wilbur]

[XCali]

Fascinating discussion.

I do, however, agree that when something is procedurally made, the machine made it. And when one sculps your map digitally you are just using a different set of paint brushes.

For instance, what would I call my Nessa'Mor map then? I did not procedurally generate ANY of it. I drew the cliffs with pencil and paper, scanned it, used a TON of brushes to sculpt it into something better. And then I drew yet again with pencil and paper what I needed buildings wise. I even sculpted the textures I used piece by piece.(With exception a free texture or two I added for fun in my map.)

Everything about that map is an almost even combination of hand drawn assets and digital sculpting. So what do one call it then? It was self made. My paint brushes just included the digital type too.

[damonjynx]

While this discussion is extremely interesting, is there really a need to label everything? I know this constant need for #tags and labels drives me insane when it concerns music, to me music is either; excellent, good, mediocre or rubbish, why instead of labelling stuff, can't we just rate it instead!

[Mouse]

That was my initial reaction, since a name can never change the actual appearance of the artwork in front of you

But I suppose a tendency to feel compelled to label everything goes with being a cartographer?

Must do really, or this conversation would have dried up ages ago

[Falconius]

That was my initial reaction, since a name can never change the actual appearance of the artwork in front of you

But I suppose a tendency to feel compelled to label everything goes with being a cartographer?

Must do really, or this conversation would have dried up ages ago

It doesn't matter what sort of art is being talked about this conversation pops up everywhere, it pops up all the time on the sculpture forums I hang out in for instance. I think it boils down to people wanting a label for their work that has a value judgment attached to it to reflect the amount of effort put into the work. This is a conversation that is never going to go away I'd suggest that people stick to simple labels that have always been around. So for instance "sculpted" instead of the modified "hand-sculpted" or "digitally-sculpted", or "illustrated" rather than "hand-illustrated" or "digitally-illustrated", or "drawn" rather than "hand-drawn" or "digitally-drawn" (which no one would say because it's confusing). In other words these modifiers are just marketing wank and only serve to confuse the issue. Everyone understands that if a thing is "drawn" or "illustrated" by someone it means that said person made it. If you say "hand-drawn" for instance the response is "Yes, if it is drawn obviously someone drew it."

[Mouse]

I suppose that since we all have our own styles there are as many different names for kinds of maps as there are maps.

For instance I would call the map I have in progress right now (The Hanging Gardens of Magrael) 'a painting in seamless textures', even though its not on a stretched cotton canvas or a piece of watercolour paper, and I have never touched it's surface with either a palette knife or a brush in my hand (I use both in my real-world landscape paintings). But the map I did before that (Scribble Rock), I would call 'a GIMP-enhanced CC3 map', even though the techniques I used to do the GIMP enhancement to the background of Scribble Rock, are identical to the techniques I'm using for the entire piece where the hanging gardens are concerned.

[ChickPea]

For me, 'hand-made' (whether it's a drawing, a sculpture, pottery etc) implies a degree of uniqueness. Your hand-made thing won't be quite like any other. You lose that distinction with digital works, as they can easily be mass-produced. I admire people who draw on paper (with no undo button to bail them out) and if I had an original drawing on paper in my hands, I would view it differently from something that came out a printer. However... once that paper drawing has been scanned and it's now in digital format, the 'hand-drawing' aspect starts to become less important.

I occasionally buy Kettle Chips, cos they're well tasty, but I pretty much roll my eyes every time at the 'hand-cooked' statement they put on the front of the bags. I mean, a McDonalds is technically 'hand-cooked'. As Falconius says, it's just sales & marketing nonsense and should therefore be completely ignored.

[Gamerprinter]

Well then you have the way I create hand-drawn maps which I call hand-drawn/digital hybrids. In such maps all the line work is done pen to paper, creating outlines for terrain, trees and walls, roads, with dash lines to show rising in elevation. After I complete the hand-drawing, I digitally scan the images, import to my preferred vector drawing program where I finish by applying color, labels, and vector shapes with bevels placed beneath the hand-drawn lines. I almost never do hand-drawn work alone and call it a finished map. My maps are indeed hybrids, but when asked I state this is a hand-drawn/digital hybrid map - and it is indeed hand-drawn, though purists might think otherwise (and personal I don't care that they think it's something else.)

GP

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