Paksworld

So…the kitchen table is now covered with drafting stuff.  Three sheets of drafting vellum for a smoother surface, taped down for security.   Scanned printouts of the earlier maps in the books (one enlarged by the person who gave it to me in New Zealand last year, and whose identifying info went *poof* somewhere along the line–it’s *almost* the same scale as the Gird map) are taped to the top layer of the padding in the correct (nearly) orientation, and the working sheet is over that.  Aarenis and Fintha are now traced on.   Bits of the north coastline of Old Aare are on, tentatively.  The coastline of the north (Prealíth from the mountains to the Honnorgat, and Dzordanya north of the Honnorgat) is on (with fingers crossed that it’s not *too* different.)   Certain necessary points have been marked (Chaya, Vérella, Valdaire, Cortes Vonja (which presents the usual problem for me…which side of the river is it on???) and I’m now working on the roads.  Sort of.  Actually I’m in here posting this.

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Note: these are time-limited questions, answers due by 8 am CDT.   (After that, they won’t have any force.)   Note also:  answers may not have any effect, even if I kick them upstairs on time.   If you choose to answer, please answer at least the first two questions.

1) What is the thing you’d MOST like to see on the cover of the new book?

Choose from a) scene, b) face of character, c) symbolic object, d) other.

2) What is the thing you’d LEAST like to see on the cover of the new book?

Choose from a) scene, b) face of character, c) symbolic object, d) other.

3) Name three books whose covers attracted you.

4) Name three books whose covers repelled you.

5) What colors on book covers attract you?  (limit of three)

6) What colors on book covers repel you?  (limit of three)

7) Which of the Paks/Gird/Luap  covers do you like best?

The new front page at the Paksworld website is now up.  If you’ve been there before you may need to hit Refresh or Reload or however your browser does it to see the new design.

Eventually the other pages will have a top design but not as big as this–maybe a green banner with the page title in gold or something–simple, anyway, and not taking up too much room.

Jennifer Davis did the digital form of the artwork from my sketches; I played with the colors; Ruta Duhon of Willowbrook Designs put it all together and kept me from going astray.

Hope you enjoy it.   (Now to quit playing with custom colors and “how many weird things can I do with this interlacement” and get back to work on the book proper.)

My artist friend Jen handed over the digital version of the title block design for the Paksworld website and I got to play with coloring  inside the lines.  Jen worked from my very crude design, done with a rollerball pen on graph paper, and made it beautiful.

The challenge was to find a design that would scale up and down and still evoke the complexity of the world I’m writing in.   We started over a month ago (before Jen was called in) and I started showing sketches to my web designer.   This produced a series of encounters  that went roughly like this:

Me: “See this?  Isn’t it gorgeous?  I want something like *this* bit right here, but mixed with this other thing over there.”

Webguru:  “Do you have any idea how many pixels that takes?”

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