The August Annual is now available and can be downloaded from your registration page, if you are a subscriber. It contains Retro Starships deckplan style that be used without Cosmographer 3. Inspired by the deckplan artwork from the games of Free League Publishing (and created with their permission), it creates an old computer-readout style look.
If you have already subscribed to the Annual 2020, you can download the August issue from your registration page. If not, you can subscribe here.
[Download the FCW file of “Ancient Rome” example map.]
Cities. Not being a fan of mapping cities, I will admit I wasn’t looking forward to another one. Laying out a city is mostly my issue, so for this map I decided to use a cheat – I decided to loosely trace over an existing map – one where I wouldn’t be infringing upon copyrights. Enter a lovely map of ancient Rome I came across is my many hours of just searching through the internet for old maps. Come on, you know you other cartographers out there do it, too! I had come across this map I had found and it really reminded me of the style of Pär Lindström’s Renaissance City Annual, so I decided I would trace it.
After importing the .png into my map using Draw>Insert File and placing it on a new sheet, then applying a transparency to it, I began tracing out my roads first. Once I had my roads placed, I set about placing buildings, rather haphazardly, as I wanted it to look unfinished in some areas, unkempt or sparse than a regularly crowded Renaissance city.
On this map, once again, I applied some of my favorite effects such as Texturize, RGB Matrix and Hue/Sat Adjustment to give it a more antiqued look and my own personal choice of palettes tend to be more muted hues. Once I was satisfied with my placement of buildings, vegetation, etc. I set about adding any little “extras”, etc. On more than one occasion I had to use the SYMSORT command, which sorts out the symbols you choose on a sheet, setting them in proper back to front order if they are layered over each other within the same sheet, as my ADD gets the best of me when mapping anything isometric in nature.
All in all, this was a relatively easy set to work with. I like the clean lines and style of this Annual and I could actually see myself using it again for my own campaign.
About the author: Lorelei was my very first D&D character I created more years back than i’d like to remember. When I decided to venture into creating maps for my and others rpgs, I thought I owed it to her to name myself Lorelei Cartography, since it was her that led me to the wonderful world of tabletop gaming in the first place. Since then I have been honored to have worked with companies such as WizKids, Pelgrane Press, and ProFantasy.
The July issue of the Cartographer’s Annual is now available for all subscribers. Create wonderful sprawling and detailed overland maps with Sue Daniel’s new style “Spectrum Overland”.
More than 150 highly detailed symbols of mountains, hills, trees and towns make each map a little masterpiece to explore. We will expanding the style with another set of gorgeous symbols in a second issue later this year to give you even more options.
If you want to see a Spectrum Overland being created, check out this Live Mapping session from last Thursday, where Ralf goes through the whole map creation process, just as if following the pdf mapping guide.
If you have already subscribed to the Annual 2020, you can download the July issue from your registration page. If not, you can subscribe here.
The June issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2020 is now available. Explore five detailed battle maps by Master Mapper Christina Trani, showing the ground floor, upper floor and cellars of the Inn at Whisper Wood, alongside the crossroads it is located at, and the cave its cellar is connected to.
The accompanying 6-page mapping guide teaches how to use grids of any style and size on these or other battle maps, how to print them to scale even on a small home printer, and how to export them to use in a virtual tabletop environment.
If you have already subscribed to the Annual 2020, you can download the June issue from your registration page. If not, you can subscribe here.
Download the CC3+ file here. Note that you need the Annual 2019 installed to view it properly.
Mapping with the Isometric Town Annual
Now THIS was a challenge as I find city/town maps a personal struggle. Here is where the Mapping Guide comes in handy. Often, with an Annual, I am guilty of just diving in and figuring things out on my own as I go, occasionally referring to the mapping guide, but not usually. This time, since I do struggle in this area of mapping, I stuck with the Mapping Guide provided, as far as the steps in creating this little town and followed them along.
Also, quite useful when mapping with a style you aren’t very comfortable with is deconstructing the multitude of maps that are often provided along with each Annual. In this instance I was able to copy a few of Sue’s Effects from her Corvallen map and Ralf’s Menzberg map, in particular Sue’s brilliant use of the RGB Matrix. This effect is worth a dive into as it can produce some great color results on your sheet effects.
Some of my own favorite effects to use are the RGB Matrix, the Hue/Sat and a big favorite of mine, Texturize. The last one I often put on the entire map. On this one I used a common texture that everyone should have concrete. The textures I use can be found in the CC3+>Filters>Images file, though you can use just about any fill with some kind of texture. I love the look I can get on a map with just the right settings and the fill to texturize. Try it!!
I also was unable to recreate Sue’s lovely parchment….well, I probably could if I really sat for a while, but I wanted to map in a way that the average mapper would, not someone with some sort of artistic skills on the manual side, rather than digital, so instead I created a legend on the bottom of my map – I think it’s a fine substitute if one is unable to recreate, copy and paste the scroll or just doesn’t want the look of scrolled parchment on their map – either way it’s just another variation. I do, of course, use my dear friend’s lovely parchment fill she provided for this Annual. Text/Labels are pretty standard here, with no special flair, and naming wasn’t anything special either….with the exception that I DID get the name of the town from Sue’s beautiful willow trees provided with this Annual. I LOVE willow trees, on a personal note, and these are just so pretty, so Willow Field it became. I hope you enjoy it and find it useful for your own mapping needs!
About the author: Lorelei was my very first D&D character I created more years back than i’d like to remember. When I decided to venture into creating maps for my and others rpgs, I thought I owed it to her to name myself Lorelei Cartography, since it was her that led me to the wonderful world of tabletop gaming in the first place. Since then I have been honored to have worked with companies such as WizKids, Pelgrane Press, and ProFantasy.
The May issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2020 has just been released. Glynn Seal of MonkeyBlood Design has created a wonderful new town and city style for us, the Ryecroft Town style. Easy to use for anyone with the latest incorporation of the city tools into CC3+, the Ryecroft Town styles gives you a wonderful new look for your fantasy or medieval towns and cities. As usual the issue comes with a mapping guide, that takes you through creating a whole town using the style on 6 pages.
If you have already subscribed to the Annual 2020, you can download the May issue from your registration page. If not, you can subscribe here.
The April issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2020 is now available. It includes a new dungeon styles based on ink-and-paper cartography by the likes of Dyson Logos and MonkeyBloodDesign, which allows you to produce simple and effective but also beautiful black and white dungeon layouts. The included 6-page mapping guide takes you through the process of drawing a complete dungeon.
If you have already subscribed to the Annual 2020, you can download the April issue from your registration page. If not, you can subscribe here.
The March issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2020 is now available. The map pack “Alexandria-class Starship” contains a fully realized space ship, including an exterior view, multiple decks and a description. In addition the Annual issue comes with 186 science fiction/modern bitmap fills and a tutorial on how to import and use these in any map or style of your choice.
If you have already subscribed to the Annual 2020, you can download the March issue from your registration page. If not, you can subscribe here.
The February issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2020 is now available and brings you an amazing local area style by Sue Daniel, who painstakingly recreated the style of early modern cartographer Joseph de Ferraris.
Ferraris was one of the first map-makers to map whole regions in exquisite detail and high accuracy and his maps of today’s Belgium are works of art. With Sue’s Ferraris style you can recreate this wonderful type of map in CC3+ for real-world or imaginary locations. The detailed 12-page mapping guide that is included with the Annual issue takes you through all the steps of assembling the dozens of fill styles and hundreds of symbols into your own little piece of cartographic art.
If you have already subscribed to the Annual 2020, you can download the February issue from your registration page. If not, you can subscribe here.
As is our tradition for the Cartographer’s Annual we produce an extra issue each year and make one of them available for anyone. For 2019, the bonus issue IS the free one.
The Bonus issue “Symbol Drawing Tools” takes advantage of some recent updates to add drawing tools for mountain ranges, scattered woodlands and other terrain types to the overland styles of CC3+. The updates allow the creation of drawing tools that place randomized symbols along paths and fill polygons with a random scattering of symbols. The included mapping guide teaches you how to set up these kind of tools yourself. The example map as shown on the right was drawn with drawing tools only. No individual symbols were placed.
The bonus issue is available as a free issue and can be used by anyone with Campaign Cartographer 3 Plus. Download it from the Cartographer’s Annual Vol 13 web site.
