Worldbuilding 01

Worldbuilding is among my favorite activities as a writer. I really enjoy the art of cobbling together a believable setting.

A ConWorld is the result of worldbuilding. This term is a bit dated. Its use is rather rare now. ‘ConWorld’ is short for Constructed World.

Personally, most of my worldbuilding begins with a short piece of fiction. I get the idea in my head, I write it out, and if it’s something I find really compelling, or something I can see myself continuing beyond the one story, that’s when I start to set up my new ConWorld.

Important Elements in Worldbuilding:

Geography
Cities
Countries
Cultures
Societies
Governments
Factions
Historical events
Timelines
Systems (Magic, technology, government, commerce, etc)
Religions and Belief Systems
Prominent Figures (influential characters)

That’s just to name a few of the elements involved. I’ll be posting thoughts and tips for writers who are interested in creating their own ConWorlds on a fairly regular basis.

This is an area of English composition in which I have considerable experience and knowledge.

Jack Lhasa

First published in digital format in 2025.

Jlhasa.eth

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Exoteric

Exoteric on Paragraph

December Update

In this style, next year, each month will have an update. These posts will be much like you probably expect.

Content

I will be adding a new category of posts, as I intend to do at least one long format post about music every month. Sometimes this will be more often. I may venture into other areas, as I intend to continue experimentation.

zkSync Era

This month we launched the meme token, $BALLS on the zkSync Era blockchain. This token is something that Jean and I have been discussing/planning for many months now. We’ve received quite a surprising amount of interest. We haven’t exactly dug ourselves out of poverty, but it is still incredibly exciting. The token has been fully generated, and we expect to reach DEX listing very soon. I’ll post about that when we get there. The future is bright, and you gotta have $BALLs!!

NFTs

I continue to offer my own art, mostly set in the fictional universe of Exoteric, on several fronts. Lens is sort of the ‘proto-release’ area with conversation and community being the core. The Uncut Network is home to the majority of low priced, readily available NFTs. In news there, the Only Shadow collection will be coming to a close in January. This region of the Exoteric World is very likely to show up again in the future. The Cost of Magic collection will move to the forefront at Uncut. Details forthcoming.

Fiction

The fictional Storyverse called Exoteric will continue to grow. Each NFT release has included some light flavor text, adding small details to the world. As focused NFT collections begin and end, so will the stories of the related region. I am working on a knowledge base that will debut soon. It will always be a work in progress. An ebook is planned covering The Only Shadow story, including the all the current images used for NFTs, as well as new art, and the story that ties it all together.

Knowledge Base

The upcoming knowledge base will be reminiscent of an RPG manual written in the wiki format. Once I’ve completed a sufficient amount of its skeleton, I’ll make it public while I continue to add to it. The Knowledge Base will become increasingly important to the Exoteric project, as I hope others will want contribute their own stories, art, music, design, etc within the Exoteric multiverse. Anyone interested is welcome to contact me at any time, but I won’t actually be seeking out other creators to collaborate with until I’ve made more of the setting public.

That’s all folks!

December can be a tough time. I hope that my efforts can provide some pleasure to others. The goal is to make my vision come to life, in a way that is fun and relatable; to create a massive fictional context, in which others want to add to themselves, becoming fans and creators.

Okay, that’s enough for now. Thank you all for your purchases, support, companionship, and inspiration.

Jack Lhasa

The Process

The method I use to create NFTs

((Published to listed.to and my paragraph ))

Interview Answers

questions from https://warpcast.com/lampphotography

From Farcaster Conversations

My process

(published as replies on Farcaster)

Questions were asked by Lauren at Lamp Photography

https://far.quest/lampphotography

(How did you create it?)

I use a really complicated method for most of my art.

It started with a photograph. I then tweaked it with GiMP, creating the color swatches and removing the background. Then I put it into an AI, in order to make it not look like a photo. After tweaking the AI multiple times, I got a nearly finished image. This I took and ran back through GiMP and Snapseed, getting rid of marks that were out of place, toying with the full color settings and filters. And this got me to the final image.

I do this(roughly) same process for most of my nft art. I try to put in the extra effort so it’s not an AI image, just an image that I used AI during the creation process. This also keeps my work free of any copyright issues.

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(How long does it take?)

Well, it’s not as big a deal now. I’ve been refining the process for about 18mo.

I don’t like the way AI is generally used for images. Anyone can type stuff in. Although there is an art to crafting prompts.

I wanted my work to be free of any accusations of copyright infringement, and to keep the commercial rights free.

I can’t say exactly how long this image took, but in general, images I create this way, I do over several days. Some parts of the process are quite fast. Others not so much. I’ll generally work in 3 separate phases.

The photo or 3D render, and its first adjustments.
Working with AI changes(this is the real time consumer)
Final image processing.

If I know exactly what I want as the end result, I can finish one in a few hours.

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(You must be one of the first authors in the world to use such a process)

Well, it’s also very personally tuned. There’s nothing stopping others from using the same applications, but I spent months playing with the order I did things in, trying dozens of image editing apps, and dozens of AIs.

Something I think everyone should do is keep notes on their process. This can make things much more streamlined in future creations.

I save every AI prompt I use in a notebook. I also keep notes on filters and tools that I use often.

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(Do you recommend any apps?)

There are tons of good ones!!

But, Drafts is by far my favorite. It’s only available on iOS and Mac Though.

I also use Obsidian a lot. It’s great for writing long form.

Logseq is also an excellent app for notes.

I recently started using Standard Notes, because you can publish a note as a blog entry directly in the app.

And Omnivore is absolutely wonderful for taking notes on web articles as you read them.

I try out every new writing app I can as soon as I can. Always looking for a better or unique method.

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