Paksworld

There’s a new image up on the Character Gallery:  Aliam Halveric in late middle age.    Hescox has captured the tough, seasoned commander and the man who can (when appropriate) laugh at himself.    I’m very happy with it.

So here’s the new page on the website: the Character Gallery.    Here’s where art depicting the characters will be displayed.   First up is Arvid in his earlier days, much as he was when Paks first saw him.    I hope you enjoy this page, as it grows with more artwork related to Paksworld, mostly characters but maybe (depends)  some decorative stuff.

If you prefer to visualize characters yourself, in your own mind, no need to go see what someone else thought a character looked like–but if you enjoy others’  visual imagination, go right ahead.   I’ve commissioned several sketches from Richard Hescox; this is the first up.   Aliam Halveric will probably be next.  As he’s fitting them in between other work, it’ll likely be months between new appearances.

The Paksworld website has some new material on it–some of it you’ve seen here, but it’s moved there for easier reference.  And some has been expanded.   I had to hit my Refresh button several times (OK, once for each changed page) to see it, but there are now maps (under the Places/Maps) link, more on holidays (under the People/Religion link) and cover pictures for both the US Oath of Fealty and the UK Deed of Paksenarrion (under the Fiction link.)

Enjoy!

Over on the website,  part one of the People section is now up and live.  It covers the basic groups, some of which–elves, dwarves, and gnomes– have been discussed on this blog.   I took out some bits of the blog info as not really necessary, and added some.

Additional groups discussed include the kuaknom/iynisin/dark cousins–those “fallen” elves the others don’t like to mention–and four basic, distinct human lineages: the Old Humans of the north, the magelords who came over the sea from Old Aare to Aarenis (and later, the north), the horse nomads,  and the Seafolk.    The people in the far west, beyond Kolobia, are peripheral enough (so far!) that they’re not being included.

Eventually (but not immediately–need to spend more time on the books proper) there’ll be more background information on specific people–both “current” (in book terms) and historical (ditto), myths and legends, religions, etc.

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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