Thank you

[thepencilneck]

I just wanted to say "Thank You."

I'm a wannabe author and I'm working on a sail-punk novel. I threw together a few different versions of maps of my world but they were all... well... not good.

But I went through a few of the tutorials on this site and churned out something that I really like and is already helping me.

Here's my map:

mappingAttempt_0308.png

It's not finished and still needs some tweaking but for a rough draft, it rocks. And I couldn't have done it without the incredible tutorials you guys have put together.

So...

Thank you.

[thepencilneck]

Oh and I guess I should mention that this was done in Gimp.

[amberroberts09]

Great map thepencilneck....

[jtougas]

Welcome and Great start !!

[Korash]

Yup, liking that rough draft. I esp. like your take on mountains.

Have some rep for posting the map in your first post

[jbgibson]

Nice job. If you're going to do a "neatly fits a rectangular page" world or region, do it on purpose (plenty of period cartographers did that, making more of a stylized representation than an accurate land layout). And again thanks for showing us a map right in your first post.

Could you give us your definition of sailpunk? I could Google the unfamiliar term, but why not encourage a writer to wax eloquent? ;-)

[amberroberts09]

Nice Job and great start...

[arsheesh]

Welcome to the Guild thepencilneck! Nice job on your first map too.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[thepencilneck]

Yup, liking that rough draft. I esp. like your take on mountains.

Have some rep for posting the map in your first post

That's kinda funny. The mountains posed a huge problem. I searched through all my brushes and was trying all sorts of things. Those mountains are actually some blood splatter mixed with some eyebrows.

[thepencilneck]

Nice job. If you're going to do a "neatly fits a rectangular page" world or region, do it on purpose (plenty of period cartographers did that, making more of a stylized representation than an accurate land layout). And again thanks for showing us a map right in your first post.

Yeah, I didn't realize I had that "stick it in a rectangle" thing going on until long after I had most of it done. Then I looked at it and thought... well... that's kinda crappy.

I'm thinking about taking this and aging it, and tweaking things to make it look more hand-drawn. That way the boxiness of it isn't as irritating.

Could you give us your definition of sailpunk? I could Google the unfamiliar term, but why not encourage a writer to wax eloquent? ;-)

Of course, the whole "punk" genre started with the Cyber-punk. The idea was that so much of science fiction that dealt with the near future was pristine, anti-septic, and clean and that a more "roughed-up" version of life is more realistic. With movies like Blade Runner, you start getting an image of the future where everything is dirty. You've got trash on the streets. You've got dirt and graffiti on the walls.

This developed into the very popular "steam-punk" movement: an alternate reality usually set in Victorian(-like) times contrasting ornate mechanical devices with gritty industrial age life.

Sail-punk is a step a little further back to the point where sailing ships still rule. My world is set into a time similar to the Age of Sail (16th-18th centuries) before the advent of the Industrial age and the development of power sources like coal, gas, and steam. My world is actually a constructed planet being used as a generation ship to transport people and livestock from our solar system across the galactic void to another solar system at a sub-light pace. The humans of this constructed world fought a war and in the process lost their technology and civilization. Knowledge of advanced technology and the history of the world became myth and legend and religion. Over the thousands of years of their voyage, they've re-developed and this part of the world has achieved a late-Renaissance technological level. They're just now branching out and exploring the rest of the world.

Yeah. Don't get me started talking about it.

But developing this map has really helped solidify some of my story-lines.