Straight to the point—what got done this past week:
Finished the Map of Malkona
Or rather, I finalized its overall visual. Over the past few weeks, I’ve mostly been working on post-processing after exporting from Inkarnate: removing artifacts, refining rivers, lakes, and coastlines, tweaking color correction, and so on. Done! I’m satisfied. There’s still a long road ahead for adding all the necessary labels to the map—along with designing the typography (turns out making it both readable and aesthetically pleasing is no easy task)—but overall, the map is ready for its alpha release.
Started Learning to Draw
Honestly, anything remotely resembling “fine arts” has always been a sore spot for me: I sing terribly, dance atrociously, and drawing… yeah, let’s not even talk about that. The wobbly little house I drew in a career aptitude test was the pinnacle of my artistic career.
Time to learn. My thought process went like this:
- Developing a fictional world without visuals is not cool. I can see it in my head, but no one else can.
- Using AI-generated art for a public project? No thanks. Not my path.
- Commissioning artists? No money for that (and they also can’t see inside my head).
So yeah, if you want art—grab a stylus and get to work.
I approached this systematically: took a Udemy course, armed myself with a tablet, a stylus, and an anatomy atlas (a little something for casual evening reading), and wished myself good luck.
The results of my first week can be seen on the Bryleahn page. Initially, I just wanted to draw an ear—to celebrate reaching the “Ear Shapes” lesson—but then I got a little carried away. This is a Bryleahn girl. More than that, she’s a very specific Bryleahn girl who holds an important place in my heart—and in the planned Taliskarn story.
Of course, this is a very early concept—and there are issues I can see but don’t yet fully understand (and I want to change her nose too)—but I’m still really happy with it. I managed to transfer the overall idea from my head to the page without catastrophic losses!
I’m still figuring out where to post all these drawings—including those unrelated to Taliskarn but reflecting my progress. I want a record of the process. Might start an Instagram.
Finished the Website’s Technical Setup
Continued from last week:
- Finalized the templates for the main pages
- Implemented search and bilingual support (English-Russian)
- Set up a navigation system that works for me
- Did some minor work on responsiveness (looks fine on my devices)
Next steps: integrate a module for displaying the map, consider blog comments (most likely won’t have them—you can always find me on Discord, and the website is meant to be a static Taliskarn wiki-repo), upload the base content, and get it online.
Wrote the First Taliskarn Short Story
Well, aside from the Myth—so if you count that, this would be the second. I’m publishing this story, though I’m not entirely satisfied with the pacing in the final third. In any case, it’s still more of an experimental piece—testing out the style and principles of future storytelling. Along the way, I also expanded the wiki with more information on Arydar culture.
Plans for the Coming Week
I want to push the website to publication as soon as possible—it’s an important milestone for me. So all available resources are being allocated to that. The tasks:
- Finalize the base content: fill out the core pages
- Organize articles into proper sections based on what I already have solid ideas and materials for—most likely covering the major races and cultures, key central regions (Brylea-Verda-Riku), and some additional bits
- Add the necessary labels and icons to the map for the alpha version release
- Plan the structure for Discord and other external project resources
- Draw, draw, draw. Too tired to think? Time to draw.
Full workflow breakdown: if I haven’t cleared my main work tasks, I work on those. If I have, I think about Taliskarn. Too tired to think? I draw. Occasionally, eating and sleeping is a good idea too. Oh, and I have an ongoing DnD campaign that also demands time and energy. That’s life.
So, by the end of this week—or next at the latest—I hope to launch the project into its second phase: public development.
Stay tuned!