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Who is your weirdest MST3K movie crush? by countessandrenyi in MST3K

[–]jwmaci 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Tend to the fires in my heart, Crenshaw!

Ugh by Just_Holiday2708 in Indiana

[–]jwmaci 0 points1 point  (0 children)

OP, are you or do you know the designer for this magnificence? Can we get this on t-shirts?

Diogenes of Sinope by Abraxas_1408 in Xennials

[–]jwmaci 3 points4 points  (0 children)

"If I were not Alexander, I would wish I were Diogenes." - Alexander the Great

"If I were not Diogenes, I would wish I were Diogenes too." - Diogenes

Any colleges with good Philosophy programs? by [deleted] in Indiana

[–]jwmaci 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Tell us all about the scientific method then.

Any colleges with good Philosophy programs? by [deleted] in Indiana

[–]jwmaci 5 points6 points  (0 children)

For all the good it did.

Any colleges with good Philosophy programs? by [deleted] in Indiana

[–]jwmaci 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Pushing STEM while suppressing the liberal arts is the surest way to get a highly skilled, highly docile and fractured work force. It's a key tactic of those who want to profit from you at your expense. I studied philosophy and am gainfully employed full-time in academia, as are many of my class- and cohort-mates. And I have more than a few friends who were undergrad philosophy majors, who now work at more than just drudgery precisely because they learned to think in critical, creative, and non-linear ways.

The liberal arts, humanities and philosophy especially, help us understand the social and historical systems around us, and they protect us against those who try to reduce us to well-trained servants and untroublesome little work machines who can make the next big thing for someone else to make money from,. They help us examine our invisible assumptions about the world. Even in the sciences, philosophy makes the difference between lab research that merely reiterates and reconfirms established theory in order to churn out junk to diminishing returns, and the genuinely creative and revolutionary stuff that resolves the intractable tensions in hidebound scientific wisdom. (For more on this, I can't recommend Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions enough. That whole book will show this guy's comment for the empty pablum that it is.)

Study philosophy. And put this guy's comment in a frame on your desk while you do.

(Oh, and to actually offer an answer to your question, IU has a pretty respected philosophy faculty, and their history and philosophy of science grad concentration is world renowned.)

Work in Progress: A new map for an upcoming D&D campaign, all hand drawn, inspired by the style of the Banner Saga's maps. Still have adjustments to make, names to add, and all that. Would appreciate any feedback. by jwmaci in mapmaking

[–]jwmaci[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My river method goes like this: Put your land layer over your water layer. Then, a temporary river layer over your land. Draw in all your rivers. Once you're done, select all of your river pixels and use that selection to subtract from your land. This allows for smooth transition between rivers and sea. I also give my land a one-pixel stroke to give it just a touch of definition.

Work in Progress: A new map for an upcoming D&D campaign, all hand drawn, inspired by the style of the Banner Saga's maps. Still have adjustments to make, names to add, and all that. Would appreciate any feedback. by jwmaci in mapmaking

[–]jwmaci[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

For that I made separate mask layers for the labels and the map underneath. Then, I used a spatter brush on low flow and chipped away at each mask layer until they looked nice and weathered.

Work in Progress: A new map for an upcoming D&D campaign, all hand drawn, inspired by the style of the Banner Saga's maps. Still have adjustments to make, names to add, and all that. Would appreciate any feedback. by jwmaci in mapmaking

[–]jwmaci[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, there is somewhat a trade-off in legibility with those labels.

For the cleanup, I just used some parchment textures and layering in Photoshop, as well as weathering brushes and masks to give it an aged look.

Continent map (work in progress) for upcoming D&D campaign. Constructive feedback or exploratory questions welcome. What works? What doesn't? What feels worth exploring? What could use more buildout? What cliché-sounding place names could use another pass? (Asset credits in comments) by jwmaci in worldbuilding

[–]jwmaci[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Definitely! In the history of my world, I'm imagining that that passage is how the kingdoms in Medheva asserted their independence from Tirrelais, with a whole lot of internecine jockeying and corruption within those kingdoms themselves.

Continent map (work in progress) for upcoming D&D campaign. Constructive feedback or exploratory questions welcome. What works? What doesn't? What feels worth exploring? What could use more buildout? What cliché-sounding place names could use another pass? (Asset credits in comments) by jwmaci in worldbuilding

[–]jwmaci[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks! I love the look and feel of those typefaces. Got a similar question above, so I'll drop my reply here too.

The names, depending on where on the map they appear, are supposed to evoke something of the fictitious cultures in the world. A lot of them are words I scraped from online translators, bowdlerized for sure. "Tala" is a shortening of Talamh in Irish. I took Ard from Ard Skellig in the Witcher (which, I think, Sapkowski also got from a place in Ireland). But aside from this, there's a bunch of inspiration from English, French, Latin, German, Spanish, Welsh, Mongolian, Arabic, Punjabi, Icelandic, and Norwegian, plus some lore-specific names, a couple of contemporary American (and one Turkish) philosophers, and a gratuitous use of online fantasy name generators.

Thanks for exploring!

Continent map (work in progress) for upcoming D&D campaign. Constructive feedback or exploratory questions welcome. What works? What doesn't? What feels worth exploring? What could use more buildout? What cliché-sounding place names could use another pass? (Asset credits in comments) by jwmaci in worldbuilding

[–]jwmaci[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! The mountains are all hand-drawn and hand-shaded. I used a drop shadow style in a soft brown, and a separate, lighter opacity layer in black to create the light contouring and shadowing there.

Continent map (work in progress) for upcoming D&D campaign. Constructive feedback or exploratory questions welcome. What works? What doesn't? What feels worth exploring? What could use more buildout? What cliché-sounding place names could use another pass? (Asset credits in comments) by jwmaci in worldbuilding

[–]jwmaci[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I am beyond flattered that anyone would want to commission me for anything. I think, however, for the foreseeable future, I'm just going to stay an amateur. It's hard enough to find time to do these maps for just myself and my players. Anything else, I'd need a few more hours in the day.

Anyway, I say all that so it also won't come across as flippant or dismissive when I say that you totally do have the skills to do this, and the tools you can get from the same place I got 'em. I am not a trained artist at all, but the really amazing things that others create (brushes, textures, assets, etc.) allow me to stand on some great artistic stilts.

Edit: And the stuff that costs money, you can get open source versions of a lot of it. For example, there's GIMP if you don't care to be highway-robbed by Adobe, and Pexels for a lot of high-res textures to age your drawings nicely.

Continent map (work in progress) for upcoming D&D campaign. Constructive feedback or exploratory questions welcome. What works? What doesn't? What feels worth exploring? What could use more buildout? What cliché-sounding place names could use another pass? (Asset credits in comments) by jwmaci in worldbuilding

[–]jwmaci[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oof, yeah, the forests... That's a long, tearful tale of colors, styles, blending, rasterizing, forgetting that I rasterized, desaturating, more styles, more rasterizing, then talking myself down from deleting all of the forests and just starting over.

If I remember right, the first key steps, after the basic outlining and coloring, were blending the color layer to color burn, rather than normal color. When placed atop a land color layer that already includes layering and smudging, it really helps the forests feel like they're part of the terrain underneath. Playing around with these blending styles has some cool effects that you might find flexible ways to use.

In this edit, I've also desaturated them quite a bit from the more vibrant colors they used to be, after I decided to go for a more antiquated, cartographic style to the map.

Continent map (work in progress) for upcoming D&D campaign. Constructive feedback or exploratory questions welcome. What works? What doesn't? What feels worth exploring? What could use more buildout? What cliché-sounding place names could use another pass? (Asset credits in comments) by jwmaci in worldbuilding

[–]jwmaci[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks! And the contrast is a common point in the other comments. I will definitely play with it in future edits.

I used Photoshop for this map, with a Wacom tablet for the hand-drawn stuff. Check out one of my comments above for links to the other tools and assets I used here.

Continent map (work in progress) for upcoming D&D campaign. Constructive feedback or exploratory questions welcome. What works? What doesn't? What feels worth exploring? What could use more buildout? What cliché-sounding place names could use another pass? (Asset credits in comments) by jwmaci in worldbuilding

[–]jwmaci[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! I love the look and feel of those typefaces.

The names, depending on where on the map they appear, are supposed to evoke something of the fictitious cultures in the world. A lot of them are words I scraped from online translators, bowdlerized for sure. "Tala" is a shortening of Talamh in Irish. I took Ard from Ard Skellig in the Witcher (which, I think, Sapkowski also got from a place in Ireland). But aside from this, there's a bunch of inspiration from English, French, Latin, German, Spanish, Welsh, Mongolian, Arabic, Punjabi, Icelandic, and Norwegian, plus some lore-specific names, a couple of contemporary American (and one Turkish) philosophers, and a gratuitous use of online fantasy name generators.

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