Thread: Book Maps.

Originally Posted by Gandwarf

David Eddings used to be my favorite author. I read all his books between ages 10 - 16. His style is really simple and he can spin a tale, like you said. I loved it.

Now I am more grown up and unfortunately think the books are a bit "childish". Also I realise the Belgariad and Mallorean contain a lot of the same. Especially the characters. But it was a *lot* of fun to read back in the day.

I'm the same. I got in to Eddings' writing before he owned up to collaborating with his wife. I still enjoy the Belgariad, and the books about Belgarath and Polgara, but the others are basically the same. The Mallorean rehashed the Belgariad story and the Elenium/Tamuli characters used the all same archetypes. I'm afraid Eddings draws too heavily on the "stock" story and character types.

I've grown quite fond of Janny Wurts' writing, her characters have depth and motivations. I think her Mistwraith and Wars of Light and Shadow series beats the Belgariad/Mallorean hands down.

Ya, it was somewhat the same but I guess I'm a kid at heart

Goodkind and Brooks I've never really liked, I read Elfstones of Shanarra<sp?> when I was in junior high, I've never picked up another brooks novel again.
Speaking of piles of ****, Paolini put out his third novel.... I couldn't get through his first one it was such trash.

I guess I'm too old school when it comes to fantasy ... I liked the DL novels... until the authors thought it was a good idea to start just killing characters and then bringing them back and then .... bleh... But I still read my Conan stories by REH .. I still read the Elric saga which I love.... Though I read the Drizzt series and Love Salvatore's books for the most part.... I f#$%^ hate Drizzt.... with a passion.... that's a whole other long story

Originally Posted by delgondahntelius

Speaking of piles of ****, Paolini put out his third novel.... I couldn't get through his first one it was such trash.

Did you see the first movie? Man, that was really bad. I didn't like the books either. They are written in a very simple and childish style.
But hey, he is a published and even succesfull author so he must be doing something right

Beautfiul maps, and love the coastlines. They must have taken a while.

I'll try to rep you for the maps and the bravery of taking on a novel. That's no mean feat!

On the second map, you need to work on the edges of the mountain areas. It's a shame to have such a lovely hand drawn style and then to have such an obvious computer cut edge on the pattern. It breaks the impression of hand drawn images.

Edit: Nuts, need to spread some rep around...

Originally Posted by Gandwarf

Did you see the first movie? Man, that was really bad. I didn't like the books either. They are written in a very simple and childish style.
But hey, he is a published and even succesfull author so he must be doing something right

Just because you put a pile of dog**** in a bag and mark it 'fresh fudge' by no means magically makes it fudge... it's still **** ....

Originally Posted by torstan

Beautfiul maps, and love the coastlines. They must have taken a while.

I'll try to rep you for the maps and the bravery of taking on a novel. That's no mean feat!

On the second map, you need to work on the edges of the mountain areas. It's a shame to have such a lovely hand drawn style and then to have such an obvious computer cut edge on the pattern. It breaks the impression of hand drawn images.

Edit: Nuts, need to spread some rep around...

Thanks tor... found I'm having to bash people in the face with my +3 bucket of hot, warm and fuzzy rep. more and more often these days.. go find some maps worth of tor's mighty reputatoin!!...

Ya... for now i'm just putting in the masks and patterns ... I'll be going back to clean up the edges .... I started to do it after I got the mountains down... and then realized that it was goign to take a while.... so i'll save it till when I get all my ducks in a row, as it were

How did you accomplish the coastline "waves" around the landmass?

Originally Posted by delgondahntelius

Now ... David Eddings... there's a man (and his wife Leigh) who can spin a tale! .... Belgariad and the Mallorean are together, the best series out there IMHO.
But don't give up! .... NEVER give up NEVER surrender!

Originally Posted by Gandwarf

David Eddings used to be my favorite author. I read all his books between ages 10 - 16. His style is really simple and he can spin a tale, like you said. I loved it.

Now I am more grown up and unfortunately think the books are a bit "childish". Also I realise the Belgariad and Mallorean contain a lot of the same. Especially the characters. But it was a *lot* of fun to read back in the day.

I didn't like his later books. I couldn't even finish the first book about the thief Althalus. Now it's not as bad as Terry Brooks' first books. Those were a blatant ripoff of Tolkien

I was going to mention The Redemption of Althalus myself. Someone got it for me (knowing I had enjoyed the Belgariad and Mallorean back in the day, though looking back, I read those not a moment too soon, as even then I thought something was odd about how the Mallorean was exactly the same as Belgariad...). Anyway... I didn't make it half way through before I put it down and didn't regret not picking it back up. I found I just didn't care about the characters or what happened to them. It was eerie to me how every sing "good guy" character--whether a central character or a peripheral character--had the exact same "wry" sense of humor... only the humor wasn't really wry, and it wasn't really humor either. The more I thought about it, the more I realized they were all the same character, just with different names and genders. Oh well...

Just thought I'd throw in the whole reason I'm here at Cartographer's Guild is the same: I like to think of myself as a writer. I'd been writing a book for years, and working on the world the story takes place in for years as well (I even have several hand-drawn maps from back at the beginning). I've got this old shoe box that used to hold all my handwritten notes and materials related to my story and my world... but eventually the volume of stuff outgrew the shoebox. I'd been transferring some of the notes over to the computer around the same time that I was entering into the final third of the first book.

Then... when I lost a lot of the type-written material, and some of the handwritten material, through a series of computer-related misfortunes (first a hard-drive crash, and later a stolen laptop, along with the filled notebook with the laptop)... I decided to stop, take stock of it all, and start from scratch with a fresh mind and a fresh perspective.

A fresh perspective, of course, meant brand new maps... and if something's worth doing, it's worth doing right, so that's why I came here!

Originally Posted by NymTevlyn

How did you accomplish the coastline "waves" around the landmass?

Select all the water areas, and on a new layer
Select>modify>contract 5
Edit>stroke>3
Select>modify>contract 4
Edit>stroke>2
Select>modify>contract 4
Edit>stroke>2
Select>modify>contract 6
Edit>stroke>1

Then Filter>Noise>Add Noise (amount: 250.0 Gaussian)
Ctrl + F run filter again
Filter>Noise>Median (1 pixel)

And that's it....

delgondahntelius>

Your latest maps are wonderful. I am such a fan of pen and ink hand drawn maps. I specifically make a search when I am on this forum to search for all the hand drawn pen and ink. You have great talent. Please keep those coming. I don't see anything to change on your current map. I guess I should stop drooling now.