ralf | November 1, 2012 | Annual, herwin wielink, overland
The November issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2012 is out now. In response to popular demand we’ve expanded upon Herwin Wielink’s extremely popular overland style (released in April), adding 150 new symbols, a dozen new bitmap fills and 30 drawing tools. To bring it all together there’s a 2 page guide listing the new material. Together with the original material from April this makes a 6-page guide to mapping with this wonderfully attractive style.
The new material integrates seamlessly into the existing style, and can be added to both new and existing maps.
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Clercon | October 23, 2012 | Annual, overland, Par lindstrom
The deadline for my December Annual style is closing in and luckily enough the style is slowly coming to a more or less finished state. A lot of things, small and big have changed since my last blog post about the style. The city icons have been remade and some of the terrain I’ve gone over a second time to make sure they are good enough.
One interesting thing I’ve learned from making this style is that the end result has a tendency to change a bit while you work. The Truscian peninsula map, that is the original map for this style, is a regional map that still is quite zoomed out. The finished style will be suited for a more zoomed in regional map. Not that you won’t be able to do the zoomed out version but I think that it is in the more zoomed in version that the style will really shine.
There are still some things left to do on the style, I might try to add in some more icons and I’m thinking of adding in one or two mountain ranges that you can use as the base while creating your mountains. Just to make it easier for you to make a quick map.
The map below is the latest test map of the style. I hope you like it.
Originally posted on mappingworlds.wordpress.com
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ralf | October 15, 2012 | Annual, free resource, offer
We’ve decided to release six free issues of our Cartographer’s Annual to give non-subscribers a taste of what they are missing. Three of these issues were previously released free, the others – only subscribers have seen them to date.
You can download the installation here.
All ProFantasy customers who haven’t opted out will have received a voucher valid until the end of the month with a discount from any single Annual purchase. If you haven’t received yours, email us.
Free Issues
April 2007
The style pack Sarah Wroot Overland gives you all the tools to create maps similar to the work of master illustrator and cartographer Sarah Wroot.
Mapping Guide: Sarah Wroot Style
September 2008
The map pack “Battle Maps” contains several examples, templates and instructions on how to create your own miniatures map for your gaming table.
Mapping Guide: Battle Maps
December 2009
The December special issue contains a tutorial pack on creating quick and easy geomorphic Battles Tiles, complete with video tutorials by Joseph Sweeney.
Watch Joseph Sweeney Online Tutorials on YouTube.
July 2010
The style pack Overland Hex Maps gives you the winning entry of the 2010 user suggestions vote.
Mapping Guide: Hex Overland Maps
June 2011
The style pack Jon Roberts’ Dungeons contains a new drawing style for dungeon floorplans and battlemaps.
Mapping Guide: Jon Roberts’ Dungeon
July 2012
The symbol and texture pack High Space SciFi Tiles contains hundreds of new textures and symbol, accompanied by video tutorials by Joseph Sweeney.
Watch Joseph Sweeney Online Tutorials on YouTube.
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ralf | October 15, 2012 | Newsletter
The latest articles and news from ProFantasy from October.
News
Resources
Map-making articles
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ralf | October 15, 2012 | convention, essen, spiel
It’s time again for the world largest boardgame fair in Essen, Germany. This Thursday Spiel’12 opens its halls – and ProFantasy will be there.
See us in Hall 6, booth 6-711. Stop by to say hi, chat, get a CC3 demo, check out our new releases (Symbol Set 3 – Modern v3, Tome of Ultimate Mapping v3) and get a preview of the upcoming Perspectives 3 and Character Artist 3 artwork. See you there!
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Simon Rogers | October 15, 2012 | overland maps, rivers, Tutorial
[Ed: Bill Roach is best known in the CC3 community for creating the free Terraformer enhancement to Fractal Terrains 3. Here he turns his attention to water courses; a features which is often added to maps without much thought.]
A PDF of this article is available
(Images in this article not created by the author are either courtesy of the EPA, FEMA, USGS, or NOAA, or are licensed as Public Domain, or under the GNU Open Document License by their respective authors.)
The rivers on your overland maps will be the life blood of your simulated world. Most of the plant and animal life on your maps will cluster next to them, near them, and around them. Settlements, towns, and cities will grow alongside them, and fishermen, hunters, trappers, farmers, and merchants will depend upon them for their livelihoods. They will act as major arteries of commerce, major zones of cooperation, and points of contentious, sometimes vicious geopolitical dispute. In peace they will be places of celebration – and in war, they will be places of intrigue. They will be signposts for travelers, and form the borders of nations. They may even be the focus of religious pilgrimage. They will be some of the most important and essential key elements of your maps.
When you design your overland maps, also remember that your riverways, lakes, and seas will influence weather.Agriculture depends upon rain – and farms are typically found in water rich places. Rivers and lakes mean farms, farms lead to hamlets, villages, and towns, towns give rise to cities, and cities give rise to nations.
Continue reading »
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Clercon | October 15, 2012 | styles
I’ve been asked by Profantasy to turn the map style I used for the Truscian peninsula into a CC3 style (let’s just call it the Truscian style from now on). The thing is that when you sit and draw for your own needs you usually can cope with a lot of mistakes in your maps, maybe the city icons look a bit off or the hills just don’t look exactly as you want them to look. But that doesn’t really matter to someone else then yourself. When you suddenly are doing something that other people might be using those things start to matter and that can be a bit scary. Most of all you want it to be perfect, you don’t want it to just be ok.
Suddenly you also have to make decisions. How many types of terrain do you need? Do you have enough city icons? How many city icons are enough? The questions can very easily become quite many. The best thing to do here is to actually sit down take a piece of paper and start writing down what types of terrain you already have, what types are missing, what icons do you want, do you need some terrain features that you have to make. Do you have a compass rose and a scalebar? Get it all down and try to make a plan on when things shall be done.
When I started to put it all on paper I soon realized that I was missing a desert, some wasteland and volcanic terrain. I needed some new city icons, a volcano or two, maybe some graves, hills and so on. But now when everything is on paper and there is a plan, it is much easier to start working.
The map below is a test map of the style that I’ve made in Photoshop. It consists mostly of seamless tiles that I use as patterns. Every terrain type is on its own layer and I’m using layer masks to make the terrain visible where it shall be seen. The mountains and city icons are drawn objects that I’ve pasted in on top of the terrain layers. There is still no compass or scale bar, but I have a fairly good idea on how I will do them.
Well in December you will see the finished result, if you subscribe to the yearly annual. Hopefully some of you will find it useful.
Originally posted on mappingworlds.wordpress.com
3 Comments
ralf | September 21, 2012 | community, free resource
Recently Profantasy has offered a batch of Unlimited Patron Licenses to our customers, as a way to get a comprehensive collection of our software, including unlimited future updates.
One of the included perks is a sample map of the customer’s campaign, done by yours truly. Now one of our patrons has decided to donate this map (or better the mapping time) to the community. To decide what this sample should be, I’m asking you for suggestions. What do you want to see mapped as a freely available resource? The map will be available for download in both CC3 and PDF formats, so that you can edit it if you own CC3 yourself, or just print it for your own game.
You can see some of my mapping work at mapsandmore.com. Let me know in the comments below or head over to the forum.
Happy mapping,
Ralf
2 Comments
Simon Rogers | September 19, 2012 | Newsletter
The latest articles and news from ProFantasy from September.
News
Resources
Map-making articles
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Simon Rogers | September 19, 2012 |
The Tome of Ultimate Mapping and Symbol Set 3 are on sale at a lower price until 21st September. Get them at this price while you can!
- The monstrous 600-page Tome is still priced at $13.95 / £8.95, increasing to $19.95 / £10.95 on Friday.
- Symbol Set 3 with over 1000 extra symbols is currently $21.95 / £12.95 going up to $24.95 / £14.95
Tome of Ultimate Mapping
The Tome of Ultimate Mapping has been updated by Remy Monsen (the author of the CC3 Full Manual) to cover Campaign Cartographer 3 and all version 3 products up to Fractal Terrains 3 (Dungeon Designer 3, City Designer 3, Symbols Sets 1 and 2, Cosmographer 3 and Fractal Terrains 3). The chapters on the other add-ons will be updated after their new versions are released. Symbol Set 3 is obviously the next on the list. You can see half a dozen example pages of the Tome here.
Symbol Set 3
Symbol Set 3 – Modern comes with two completely new bitmap drawing styles for floorplans, with about 500 symbols each. One was created by Jon Roberts, the other by Michael Tumey. There is also a snazzy new blueprint-style for realistic looking player handouts, a Modern political overland style, and the old vector style has been updated to work with CC3’s sheet effects and drawing tools.
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