When I was about 12, I can remember designing a huge world after being inspired by books like the Hobbit and the Redwall series. I taped together several of those continuous form printer papers that my dad brought home from work (the ones with the green bars and the perforated holes on the sides) and drew a sprawling map which I affixed to my bedroom wall with gray tack. It wasn’t the most beautiful of drawings, but I remember being proud of it. I also remember how I fell in love with art and world-building in that moment.
That was the beginning. It only deepened as I discovered the worlds of Middle-Earth and Narnia and the evolving landscape of The Wheel of Time. Maps became the conduit for those lands and all they held. They were beautiful and magical and ancient. There is a promise in maps of winding expanse and exploration that fires the imagination. It’s a delight I’ve never lost.
Art has taken me a lot of different places and through a lot of different expressions, but that inceptive joy for maps has never faltered. RPG’s, board games, and books have alighted that passion for creation in recent years. With this website and my work, I want to create as much as I can and put it out into the universe. I want people to use it as a tool to make their own sprawling worlds and tell their own unique stories. I want the maps to be fun to look at, fun to experience, and fun to use. I want to collect ideas and craft tools that might enliven your own inspired tales.
Games and Stories and Art are collaborative efforts of experiences and friends and ideas. I hope that I can contribute a small part to whatever you are making. And in the process, indulge my own addiction to
making fun things.
Thank you for visiting my small corner of the world –
David
