The community atlas project just finished it’s 500th map competition. The competition was all about making a dungeon with a fire an/or ice theme. 18 people participated, handing in a total of 30 maps. The voting is now over, but all the maps can be seen in the voting thread.
Congratulations to the winners, and thanks to everyone who participated in the contest.
The winners are as follows, and all won vouchers to the ProFantasy store, sponsored by ProFantasy Software Ltd and JimP from the forums.
February saw many great maps posted in our community, many of them for the 500th Atlas Map competition that was running during the month. You can check those out (and vote for your favorites) here, so I won’t repeat them in this collection and showcase a few others instead.
Over on the forum AleD created a series of Viking-era maps, and this night scene of a breached palisade is just one of them. Check out the others by clicking on the image! Continue reading »
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, as archived on YouTube:
The submission period for the mapping competition celebrating the 500th Community Atlas map (and 4th year anniversay) is now over. 18 competitors have submitted 30 awesome maps, and you can help decide who wins the prizes!
Head over to the community forum to see all the entries in their full glory and vote on which three you like best. Voting is open until March 9th.
Best of luck to all participants!
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The March issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2021 is now available and we are happy to present to you a new contributor: David Castedo Gomez (Medio on the Profantasy Forum).
David has taken the Worlds of Wonder style from the 2019 Annual and re-worked and expanded it immensely; so much in fact we consider it a whole new style, and called it Erdan Worlds, the name of David’s own fantasy setting. The style comes with a full new set of symbols (more than 140) and – of course – the mapping guide that teaches you how to use it.
The March issue is now available for all subscribers from their registration page. If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2021 yet, you can do so here.
Color Key is one of those effects that can be a bit difficult to see an immediate use for. Effects like Glow, Edge Fade, Transparency and so on are very clear already from the name, and it is easy to think of scenarios where those effects would be useful. But what of the Color Key, what can we really use it for? When does it make sense to use it? It’s not quite as clear.
I didn’t really use this effect myself in the beginning, but I’ve been using it more and more over the years as I have found that it can really simplify the work process to get the look I need.
The main idea behind Color Key is that it can be used to remove parts of a sheet, allowing the sheet below to shine through. This can be done to punch hole in things, for example, you can use it to punch a hole in the landmass to see the sea fill below (creating a lake), you can punch a hole in the roof or wall of a building to see the interior, you can use it to remove the parts of the grid you don’t want and so on. But instead of actually deleting anything from the map, the Color Key is just an effect that can be later moved or removed, for example making it much easier to reshape that hole in the wall as opposed to if you had actually edited the wall entity itself.
Jason Payne from the CC3+ community has documented the overland mapping for his Realm of Aquilae fantasy setting in a terrain mapping guide, which you can get as a “pay what you like” product on DriveThruPG.com. It can be a useful resource for anyone creating their own terrain setup in CC3+. Check it out!
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So, for my last map of the 2018 Annual, I decided to just create a small map highlighting the use of Sue Daniel’s bonus Domes addition to the 2018 Annual. I, personally, have used these domes in so many of my own maps, including our cooperative project Sanctuary, and I cannot say enough how much I love using them.
(Download the FCW file)
Sue’s done a lovely job on these, giving the mapper a variety of domes to choose from, including transparent domes. For this map, I’ve created a small, walled school of magic by using the varicolored Gothic style houses in CD3 and adding a variety of the domes on the multi-leveled sheets. I started this map, however, in the Asian Town style that comes along with this year’s annual rather than CD3, as I love Sue’s textures and vegetation.
I’ve done nothing special for this map other than, I’ve added a new tool, the Wall Round, for my walls by using the 10’ Wall tool as a template, and then changing the Draw Method to Ellipse/Circle. In Options, in Draw Method, I changed the Eccentricity to 1.00. In Outline Properties I made the outline an Extra Entity, changed it’s Properties to a 2.5 Fixed Width and put the outline on the proper Layer and Sheets I wanted. I then just placed the Wall Round on the corners of my walls and there you have it.
And so, dear reader, another year’s mapping of All the Annuals series has come to a close. I hope you’ve enjoyed the variety of maps I’ve been privileged to create for you using the 2018 Annual. It has been, as usual, a welcome challenge stepping out of my dungeon mapping comfort zone, and I hope I’ve inspired some of you to do the same and try out this annual. Happy mapping, Cartographers!
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.
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Christina Trani continues her journey through the Cartographer’s Annual Vol 12 (2018) with the November and December issues, creating an asian town map, a set of deckplan geomoprhs and the resulting starship.
The community atlas project just finished it’s 500th map competition. The competition was all about making a dungeon with a fire an/or ice theme. 18 people participated, handing in a total of 30 maps. The voting is now over, but all the maps can be seen in the voting thread.
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