We have just released the August issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2013. Check out the easy-to-use sci fi style for creating stunning star system charts. The bitmap artwork has been created by Joseph Sweeney of Storyweaver and you can use the style to create charts matching his High Space game maps.
Subscribers can download the issue from their registration page. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2013, you can do so here.
The July issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2013 is now available. Check out Pär Lindström’s beautiful black & white overland style.
Subscribers can download the issue from their registration page. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2013, you can do so here.
Dear Cartographers, welcome to the June newsletter!
Dear Cartographers, welcome to the April newsletter!
We have released the April issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2013: The Midgard World overland style. Created in cooperation with Kobold Press and Jonathan Roberts, this style recreates the maps published in the Midgard fantasy campaign setting and the accompanying iPad atlas. You can now add your own regional maps for this setting, or recreate another world in the same mapping style.
Even better, the Midgard World style is compatible with the Jon Roberts overland style from the Annual Vol 5. They can be combined for a greatly enlarged variety of symbols and fill styles.
We’ve just released the March Annual issue: Flavio’s Myrr Overland style is now available as a download for the Annual subscribers.
His beautiful and unique overland style is based on intricate bitmap texture and shaded contours, as you can see from this sample:
You can subscribe to the current Annual here.
Forum member Gonzalo (pool7) has some spare ProFantasy products that he is generously giving away to the community. Post in this thread on the forum to get a chance to win a Symbol Set 1, an Annual Vol 4 or Vol 5 or a Tome of Ultimate Mapping.
A little late for January, perhaps, but here is the latest newsletter.
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Look at the Myrr Dominion map here.
[Ed’s Note: Let us know if you like this style, and with Flavio’s permission, we’ll create an Annual from it]
My fiancée recently asked me if it would be OK to make a Viking character for my Al-Qadim campaign. I thought about the role playing possibilities for a moment: Viking gets lost at sea en route to pillage and plunder; Viking gets shipwrecked in hostile desert environment; Viking PC makes for a very interest game indeed. I then thought about where such a Viking would come from in my world and set about creating a map of his home.
Myrr is a semi-arctic region largely inspired by Scandinavia, Iceland, and Alaska. I spent a great deal of time looking over maps of their fjords and river systems in the hope that I could create something similar and believable in my own map. After an hour or two tinkering around with the fractal line tool (adding a river here, indenting land mass there, etc), I finally had a landmass and set of islands I could be happy with.
The next step was to create the mountain range. I first drew the main ridge of the mountain and all the little ridges that branch off of it with the smooth poly tool. This is what the looked like without effects on.
I gave it a rather long and dark wall shadow, a deep edge fade inner (with 75% inner opacity), and a large lighted bevel effect (so that the two sides of the bevel met in the center of the polygon). I then added a Mountain Hills sheet that encircled the range with a smaller edge fade inner and lighted bevel effect. Next, I added a Mountain Base sheet that encircled the Mountain Hills (also with a smaller edge fade inner and lighted bevel effect.) Because I wasn’t thoroughly happy with the colors that were coming out, I finalized it with a Mountain Cover sheet. This shows the details of the effects:
And this is the final mountain range:
As you can see, I also used the Mountain Base sheet to layout my hills. I further added a Hills Base sheet that encircle these hills and had a deep edge fade inner to give the illusion of height. From there I added some forests (very subtle), rivers, text, (about a dozen assorted sheets to get the ocean, landmass and desert looking right) and called it a day. All of the textures came from Herwin Wielink annual and CGtextures.com.
This map was a great deal of fun to make and I learned a new technique for mountains in the process. Of course, the best part is now crafting a history about this region to help fill in the gaps of my fiancée’s character’s back-story. Although I’m far from done, you can check what I have so far (along with a full resolution version of the map) at my blog.
This is my latest map made in City Designer 3 (CD3), plus some effects added in Photoshop. It depicts the village Farjvad in the province Vadsbro and is part of the campaign/adventure I’m working on at the moment, even though I’ve mostly made maps so far.
Farjvad is situated about a day’s trip north east of the main town in the area, Vadsbro. Farjvad won’t actually be of importance for the adventure I’m writing, but it will still be a part of the campaign information. As you might have noticed I like to make maps, and making the adventure/campaign gives me some good reasons to do that. I also figured out that if I only have maps of the villages where the adventure takes place the players will rather quickly figure out what places are of importance and which ones are not. Also this will make the adventure feel much more unscripted if the players can go wherever they pleasein the area and the GM will have a nice map of the place.
So how did I go from a blank page to a finished map? What shall you think about while making a village map? First of all you have to decide where the village is situated, is it in a forest or a desert? The environment gives as well takes away possibilities for the map. In my case I know from the overland map of the province Vadsbro that Fjardinge is a village that is founded on two sides of a river, only connected via a ferry in the middle of a large forest.
I also decided that the south part of the village was the old one and that the north side is the new part where recent expansion of the village has taken place. Because that the village is situated in the middle of the forest there had to be some place for the villagers to go for protection if some kind of crises turned up. In this case I put a keep (nr 5 on the map) where the governor of the village used to live with his soldiers, maybe ten of them at a max. I could have gone with a palisade but in this case it didn’t feel right.
I also added a temple (nr 4), all places must have somewhere to go for religious need. The ruined temple (7) just outside the village was deserted when the new temple was done. What resides there today is up to the GM to decide.
Nowadays most travelers are using the northern road that leads from Vadsbro to the village Klyvholm. For this reason a newer part of Fjardinge has been built on the northern side. To make the sides differ a bit I decided to make the fields more square here, like they’ve been planned a bit. The big house at the square (nr 1) will also house the governor of the village (he decided to move here from his keep on the south side).
What I’ve actually have done here is making a story around the village and letting the story lead the way while mapping. I think I’ve stated this before but having a story in your head while mapping usually makes your maps more interesting, which means a better end result. It is also a lot more fun to map when you have a picture in your head of what the place looks like, it is like seeing your ideas come to life.
Originally posted on mappingworlds.wordpress.com
