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Madness Worldbuilding Series


madcatprime

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My name is Chris, or you can call me mad_cat. I am a writer. As a writer, it often involves me doing worldbuilding. I recently wanted to know how to make maps of my world, and saw that there were a few tutorials out there to do it. They are good tutorials, but they were not what I wanted for myself. So I decided to look at these tutorials and many others to learn to do what I wanted to create. I was then impressed what I developed that I decided to share my techniques with others.

 

Below is a list of tutorials I offer. They do make use of other tools beyond paint.net, but it is mostly paint.net you will be using. You can find a list of them here and future updates as well: http://writing.chrisvotey.com/worldbuilding/

 

Map Making

Worldbuilding #1 – Earth
A look at the our own world and what we can learn in making a map of our fictional world.

 

Worldbuilding #2 – Tools
These are the tools you will need in order to create your fictional world. Don’t worry, they’re all free.

 

Worldbuilding #3 – Continents
We use a special tool to get a shape of our continents based on a cloud rendering and a basic introduction to Paint.net

 

Worldbuilding #4 – Ocean, Continents, Lakes, and Islands
Here we begin editing our world to properly define and expand our features, and add a touch of colour to it.

 

Worldbuilding #5 – Ocean Depth and Land Texture
We make our oceans appear to have depth and our lands to have elevation with a cloud rendering technique. Now our world is starting to come to shape.

 

Worldbuilding #5a – Stars
Using the technique from our last tutorial, we can create a star similar to our sun. We also make use of a 3D tool to turn our flat image into a sphere. You can do the same with your world map, but that will be a different tutorial.

 

Worldbuilding #6 – Beaches and Shallow Water
Now we begin adding features to our world. We start with the edge of our continents and oceans with beaches and shallow water. This features the basic technique of adding both.

 

Worldbuilding #6a – Advanced Beaches
Using a new technique, we can give beaches a more organic look rather than a static look.

 

Worldbuilding #6b – Advanced Shallow Water
Using the techniques in Advanced Beaches, we now apply that to Shallow water to give it a more natural look.

 

Worldbuilding #7 – Deserts
Now starting work on shaping our land, we learn what is a desert and how placing one will affect the decisions on how we design the rest of our map.

 

Worldbuilding #8 – Mountains
One of the most important tutorials for worldbuilding is finally here. This will go over the basic technique for making mountains on your map.

 

Worldbuilding #8a – Advanced Mountains
Taking our mountains, we now add texture to our mountains like we did with the ocean and the land itself. I show two techniques. One that is simple, and the second that requires a bit of work.

 

Worldbuilding #9 - Basic Forests

Next on our journey is forests. We learn a lot of helpful facts about forests, and a basic design to them.

 

Worldbuilding #9a - Advanced Forests

Time for us to see the Forest for its Trees.

 

Worldbuilding #10 - Basic Rivers

September is going to be dedicated to Rivers. There is a lot of information and technique to go over to do Rivers right.

 

Woldbuilding #10a - River Sediment and Floodplains
Learn more about rivers in the component of how they form and how nature attempts to reduce flooding in a geographic area.

 

Worldbuilding #10b – Advanced Rivers
A common misconception is that rivers are straight. We’ll look at alluvial rivers and discuss meandering and braided rivers and a technique to take your basic rivers design and turn it into a more organic look.

 

Worldbuilding #11 – Wetlands
In literature, swamps are dark places where evil hides, or is it bogs? In actuality, wetlands are important for the planet and serve a number of uses. This article has a lot of information, and will go into how to make swamps, marshes, and bogs.

 

Worldbuilding #12 – Municipals
A quick tutorial on placing random cities and villages and dispel myths about them. Optional tutorial.

 

Worldbuilding #13 – End World
Final tutorial for the map-making series. This takes you map and makes it a globe to a planet you see in space. Optional tutorial.

 

 

(All Links Updated, New Articles Added)

Edited by madcatprime
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I read these tuts, and I am quite impressed by the tut quality and result.  Keep 'em coming!

 

I am moving this to "Creations", though, because - well, in the most grandiose sense - that's what this is.

 

Thanks!

 

The Doctor: There was a goblin, or a trickster, or a warrior... A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world.
Amy: But how did it end up in there?
The Doctor: You know fairy tales. A good wizard tricked it.
River Song: I hate good wizards in fairy tales; they always turn out to be him.

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In 2 days, I've had 50 views for my blog from this site. I've had record views on my blog from a variety of sources, and as a thank you, I am holding a contest for the month of July.

 

Grand Prize will be:

  • A copy of my book Terran Psychosis
  • A copy of my book Scraping By
  • A copy of my book Daygar Legacy Book #1 (when release)
  • A copy of The Valkyrie Profiles by K.S. Daniels
  • A personalized Map for you to use however you want

To get more information, visit my site: http://www.chrisvotey.com/writing/madness-bundle-give-away/

I thank all of you for helping make my blog successful. More Worldbuilding articles on their way.

Edited by madcatprime
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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...
  • 11 months later...

Aw, that's disappointing.  Locked for now.
 
madcatprime - send me a message if/when you get your site back up and running and I'll unlock.

 

Unlocked for edits!

 

The Doctor: There was a goblin, or a trickster, or a warrior... A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world.
Amy: But how did it end up in there?
The Doctor: You know fairy tales. A good wizard tricked it.
River Song: I hate good wizards in fairy tales; they always turn out to be him.

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  • 8 months later...

Updated all the links to my tutorial, so you shouldn't have issues going to the site. Sometimes it doesn't load its first try, so hit reload a few times if that happens.

 

I put some new ones up on the page. I am no longer doing Map Making, but rather exploring other elements of Worldbuilding. You can find my other articles on the first link, but I won't post them here as they do not relate to Paint.Net.

 

I apologize for not doing this sooner, I hadn't set my account up to send me notifications.

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  • 6 years later...
6 hours ago, Vyskur said:

Are these pages still available somewhere else than the web archive? I am missing images :)

 

I'm not aware of any other than on this site.  Hopefully the author will return (last logged on in 2016) to fix the links :) 

30b8T8B.gif

How I made Jennifer & Halle in Paint.net

My Gallery | My Deviant Art

"Rescuing one animal may not change the world, but for that animal their world is changed forever!" anon.

 
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