An Accidental Worldbuilder

Showcase Voldoria Map Design with Wonderdraft

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 23:00:05 GMT

Map of Voldoria

The finished map.

Closer looks:

The final file dimensions: 4444px to 2500px.

Exported it in 2x upscale, so the end size of this is 8888px to 5000px

So far I like wonderdraft very much. Now I will see how it will be with coloured map creations.^^

Thank you for your time! Share this post, if you think this could be interesting for others^____^

Cheers,

Daniel

Artificial Intelligence in the Self-Publishing World

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 23:00:10 GMT

I feel for you!

It is not just frustrating for self-publishers, but also for designers as well.

I have been an illustrator since 2014 and a cover designer since 2018 and all 55+ book projects I worked on with authors, all of them insisted No-AI. That already told me how frustrating it got many years ago. Today is even worse.

I myself do not use generative AI in my work. AI apps like Claude, ChatGPT, Mistral or Perplexity I use for brainstorming, text inspiration or hashtags for social media. Only once a client wanted me to implement parts of his generated content into his cover and I did so in my own way with the tools I use like paint-overs( brushes, mixer brushes, clone tool, smudge), texture bashing, photo bashing, image manipulation techniques and such in programs like Photoshop, Affinity Photo, Krita etc.

And I do not see an issue when authors and clients use AI for finding ideas or generating images used as inspiration and reference. Sometimes it is hard to describe what you want to have on the cover.

I think what is happening at this time is also a massive shift of trust into distrust, because at the rate how easy it is to deceive people with AI, that genuine designers and artists get choked so much by the flood of AI slop. And I don't know how many people probably declined me, because everyone is so fed up, that everything is dubbed AI these days, when they cannot imagine how an image was made.

It became like a reflex to say, like back in the day, when people said: "oh that must have been photo-shopped!" And it is no wonder it got to this point.

On my website I even have to do a little disclaimer at my FAQ section, that I cannot fully rule out that third party assets I use for map making are made with or in part with AI. Even though I am very careful to scan for any anomalies in graphics.

Oh man, as I said in the beginning. I feel you and the frustration! :(

Log - 30.01.2026

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 10:53:30 GMT

Weekend closing in

Just a short post wishing you a great weekend^_^

I more and more take my time to go outside into the cold and let my mind suck in all the of the environment around me. This also gave rise to ideas and brainstorming about a lot of things and also reflecting upon myself.

Anyway, have a great weekend and do not let yourself down!

Cheers,

Daniel

Making Of Cáelunárra Map Design

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 13:04:50 GMT

Showing you insights into the project I had with Scott A. Hatfield Jr.

The finished map.

Scott's reference from Inkarnate.

1. Paper Texture and Outline of the Continents

First of all, the base textures are made. Those are photos of old paper and as you can see, I also painted on top to have a sense of an old kind of drawing. You could also just do photos of coffee stains on a white paper and use that as an overlay texture.

After that a white outline of all the landmasses is made. In Photoshop, there is the possibility to set the fill of the layer to 0% and that will only show the layer effects like outlines, inside shadows and outside shadows.

A zoom in on the outlines. There you see how the inside shadow I set to colour burn and setting the opacity to around 20% or lower. This will preserve the texture below.

2. Ocean Coloration and Continent Outline Design

S election of the landmasses has been made, and that means we can add colour to the ocean and water bodies. There I took a blue colour and filled the whole water, set the water layer to colour burn(preserving textures below) and set opacity to a lower number.

For the outlines I went into the layer settings and set it up to have three lines, which look like waves at the edges.

A zoom in on the outlines. Different screenshots on how those affect different lands.

3. Forests, Hills and Mountains Placement

Placement of the terrain. For that I got marked areas by Scott he provided me first. This is pretty straightforward, painting that in as brushes in Photoshop. Just being careful not to paint too much to the edges of the lands, otherwise it would overlap to water. Though that happened here and there, which requires little touch-ups.

A zoom in on the different terrain placements.

4. Continent and Biome Colouration

Colouration of the biomes. A new layer is created and set to colour burn as well. Then we paint in with very low opacity to not overdo it. Colours indicate the climate as well. One I did not add any colour and just used the base texture colour, was the desert areas.

A little addition or fix to add a hint of a pathway to the bridge leading over the river.

5. Locations, Typography, Details and Touch-Ups

Next: Adding locations and towns, which are drawn out from the reference Scott provided me.

Plus adding typography, from the larger areas to the smaller locations, cities and towns. A few touch ups here and there by removing some trees to add hills and to get a little more space for some location names. Also we had to test out the font sizes to see which one is still readable in the original size of the map.

A very rough ink like compass is added in white with darker outlines. I only drew 1/4 of the compass, copy and pasted the parts, rotated and mirrored them to put it together like a puzzle. The space where the title of the map is located I used a paint brush stamp I did on a paper with acrylic black colour.

Touching up the mountain a bit to make it look larger and on the next slide, adding a sea monster scribble to indicate some being out in the sea that might be threatening towards anyone travelling.

6. Finishing up!

And this is the final chapter in this post.

The final file Scott got was a JPEG with dimensions of 10.000px to 7.000px.

After all, it was a great experience and this won't be the last time to work on map design.

Since I am diving deeper into it now, including new software to try, this will be very exciting for the future and it seems this will grow to be one of the big ones I will offer in the future, besides cover design and stand-alone artworks.

Make sure to give Scott Hatfield a follow on his socials:

Scott Hatfield the Author on Facebook

scotthatfieldtheauthor on Instagram

scotthatfieldtheauthor on TikTok

Check out his book and profile at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-C%C3%A1elun%C3%A1rra-Prophecy-Unleashed-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B0FGKD2QQ8?th=1&psc=1

Thank you for your time! Share this post, if you think this was helpful!^____^

Cheers,

Daniel

Exclusive Artworks I did for my Website

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 20:05:38 GMT

Hello folks, here you see artworks I did for this website exclusively, which you can see as the background graphics for the sections.

For these, I tried something new software-wise. I used Krita, which came out as a digital painting alternative to Photoshop a long time ago. I also tried it out, when it was released, but I left it unused, because I was still used to Photoshop. Now I took that opportunity to explore what it can do.

Since Krita is made specifically for digital painting, it obviously has a lot more settings for brushes and tablet use than software like Photoshop or Affinity Photo.

So I went with pretty much no specific goal in mind, except to let myself go with the flow. Since I use fractals mainly made in Mandelbulb 3D, I could not resist to see what I can come up with.

What I found exciting was using smudge and oil-like brush settings that give this kind of expressionistic and abstract way of textures, including ink splashes. I also tried out the clone stamp option. It does not 100% mimic what you can do in Photoshop and Affinity, but I found a way to make it at least similar. And that is just locking the clone source in one place, so that it looks like a mix of colours. Works even better, when you used smudge brushes before that.

A lot was placing fractal renderings and using layer blending modes, which by the way are a ton to choose from.

One goal I had though: Make it look minimalistic. Minimalism plays a big role for me, even though I tried maximalism as well, as this is a trend that is rising at those times. I had the art of Guild Wars in my mind, as this was one of the main things that influenced me throughout my journey and to this day it still does and it won't ever let me go completely.

Here are the links to the software used, for you to check out, if interested:

Krita: https://krita.org/de/

Mandelbulb 3D: https://www.mandelbulb.com/

Cheers and have a great weekend^__^

Daniel

Log - 21.01.2026

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 14:20:33 GMT

It is funny...

...how short content, like Reels, Tiktok, Youtube Shorts is just so extremely boring to me.^^ I rather watch hour-long documentaries about one single subject. I think I broke the cycle of scrolling mindlessly and focusing on my own stuff now.

I know, this is the first post on this blog and I am probably supposed to write what this is all about^^

Well...this blog will contain work insights, spontaneous thoughts I would probably post quickly on social media, occasional appearances of our cats Indira and Asura, shoutouts to authors and more.^__^

And yes, I write as I naturally do with others, with all the grammar errors.^^ So there is no A.I. writing for me :D