A Happy New Year to all you cartographer’s out there, we hope you had a good start into 2021. If you want to celebrate it with a bit of mapping, we have a new city drawing style for you, created by our dear Pär Lindström. “Fantasy Towns”, the first issue of the Cartographer’s Annual Vol 15 (2021) is now available for all subscribers from their registration page.
If you are unsure about the Annuals and their content, check out our free sampler. With 14 individual issues, it’s now bigger than any one yearly volume of the Annuals!
Comments Off on Cartographer’s Annual 2021: January
We have assembled all the individual issues into one complete setup, which is now available from the registration page for all subscribers. If you purchase it now, you get immediate access to the complete collection of all thirteen issues.
At the same time, the Annual 2021 (Volume 15) is available for early subscription at a 15% discount. You can subscribe and check out a preview of the first three months here.
Comments Off on Cartographer’s Annual Vol 14 complete and Annual 2021 available
Early next year we will release the next iteration of the Token Treasury with Monsters 2. Another set of 100 iconic, fun and useful monsters for your fantasy tabletop adventures. Check out the preview on the product web page and see some examples on the maps below.
Every week we do a live mapping session on YouTube, showcasing a certain style or set of tools in CC3+. Here are the most recent Live Mapping videos with Remy and Ralf, as archived on YouTube:
Well, I love this annual. It makes just such pretty maps. I didn’t work on this awfully long. Actually, the longest stint was just waiting just a few hours for Ralf to get me a new file to unzip, as I had a little glitch with the vari-colored trees that got fixed up right quick. ProFantasy support is awesome.
(Download the FCW file)
So, for this map, just mapped as I went. I had no clear plan what I was going to do, so I just started putting down buildings, then the walls around them. I modified a few symbols by changing their scale to use in an unconventional way or two, but that’s what I do (such as the docks and the trellis over the walls).
After getting my structures settled, I set about the landscape, water, and rock ridges. For vegetation, I always start with the low-lying vegetation bushes both green and flowering, then I like to make two sheets for trees, just to assure certain trees I want are higher than others.
I wanted a boat and a few things around the map and normally I would delve into my arsenal of symbols to really dress this map up. Since this is a series featuring the Annuals, the maps should be symbols from the annual only….so what else to do than make my own? I set out to make a rudimentary boat, as I am no Sue, Hans or Pär by any means. I made a sheet for the basic boat shape, then another for the boat bottom and it’s shading to give the illusion of depth (not the well, I’m afraid, lol) and another for the rim of the boat. By adding some Glow effects and Bevel effects, I think it’s decent a job with the tools and talent I’ve got. I also made some stone benches for reflection throughout the temple by creating a sheet and putting the Glow, Bevel and Shadow effects on them. There’s also been a reflection well created on one of the islands.
The font I’ve got showing on the image in not ProFantasy issued. I wanted something with a bit more of an Asian flair so I went online and found this free for commercial use font called Night in Tokyo, which can easily be found by doing an internet search. You, reader, will get the standard font for this annual, Uchiyama, when starting a new map with this style.
Every year we make one of the Cartographer’s Annual issue available for free to give everyone a taste of the tasty mapping inside. This year we decided on the Tagkrammer Isometric style from December, that lets you create 3D maps of buildings and dungeon layouts. This style is now included in the Free Sampler.
To make up to all our loyal subscribers, we add a bonus issue to the year’s roster. This year Sue Daniel expands on her City Cliffs symbol pack with two new sets of symbols, one in limestone and the other in sandstone. Almost 150 new symbols in 2 catalogs, 3 new bitmap fills, and two alternate versions of the Varon Rock example map give you lots of sheer rock faces to tinker with.
November has come and gone and produced another fine crop of user maps on both the Profantasy forum and in the CC3+ FB Group. Here is a very small selection of them presented as the November installment of our popular Maps of the Month blog.
Near the beginning of the month Loopysue completed a map that Jerry Thiel started some time ago. Jerry is sadly no longer able to map but still finds pleasure in writing game scenarios. The Lakes of Michigami is a fantasy version of a real world location intended as the main campaign map. Continue reading »
Well, it’s been a busy time for me. I’ve returned to full-time in person work and have had little time for mapping. But….games do go on, so a DM needs to be able to through together something quick on the fly. That’s what this is….a map I literally threw together in no time.
(Download the FCW file)
I decided to go with a seasonal theme with this one. So, here’s an orc kingdom during the autumn season in some fantasy world. This style made it pretty simple to through together something quick, easy and pleasing to the eye. Just follow along the mapping guide if you’ve no clue where to start.
Comments Off on All the Annuals: Dark Fantasy (August 2018)
The year is almost over, and we will soon be starting the resubscription offer for 2021. But until then the Cartographer’s Annual has another great mapping style for you: Tagkrammer Isometric for Perspectives-style floorplans.
We became aware of the beautiful isometric floorplan for a merchant’s “Kontor” on the Cartographer’s Guild and approached the author about turning it into a CC3+ style. Kawe Weissi-Zadeh of Westphalia Miniatures was happy to oblige and the result is the Tagkrammer Isometric style. It is an easy to use floorplan style, that can make good use of Perspectives 3 tools, but can also be used without that add-on.
On Thursday, December 3rd, the style features in our Live Mapping session on You Tube.
If you have already subscribed to the Annual 2020, you can download the December issue from your registration page. If not, you can subscribe here.
Comments Off on Cartographer’s Annual: December 2020
A Happy New Year to all you cartographer’s out there, we hope you had a good start into 2021. If you want to celebrate it with a bit of mapping, we have a new city drawing style for you, created by our dear Pär Lindström. “Fantasy Towns”, the first issue of the Cartographer’s Annual Vol 15 (2021) is now available for all subscribers from their registration page. 
