This is a lovely style, which compliments the Japanese Temple Annual. The tools and symbols you get between the two give you all you need to create a really nice Asian inspired city, town or village.

(Download the FCW file)

I honestly haven’t much to say about this map. I did get the coastline from a satellite pic in Google that I slightly modified, but other than that, I just mapped along as I felt inspired, starting with my cliffs along the beach. After that, everything just fell into place.

I really love a nice easy style like this. Thanks to Sue Daniel for another fantastic Annual.

The Cartographer’s Annual Vol 14 (2020) is now available as a full collection and consolidated setup of all the 13 individual issues that were released over the course of the last year. If you didn’t subscribe and are just buying it now, or you just didn’t follow the monthly releases, the full setup is available among your registration page downloads. Check the Annual’s page to see the content list.

In 2020 we also started the live mapping series on YouTube and over its course we demoed most of the Annual issues of the year. If you want to see the Annual’s styles in action, here is a convenient listing of these videos in one place:

January: Watabou City

March: Starship

April: Black & White Dungeon

May: Ryecroft Town

July: Spectrum Overland

August: Retro Starships

October: Serpentine City

December: Tagkrammer Isometric

I’ve been mapping with the software for about around 5 years, so rather than follow the tutorial, I figure I’d just supply an overland map using the Mike Schley Overland style in my personal style.

[Download the FCW file]

First, after deciding I would do a smaller environs map of a valley, I quickly established I would do a map set in the season of autumn. I had done a commission some time back for Pelgrane Press, Shards of the Broken Sky, and did a small regional map where I had adjusted the hues in the map for place with red, clay colored soil. That map is so simple, yet one of my favorites I’ve ever done, and it’s all because of the palette. So, for this map, I decided I would do the same in picking autumn.

Since this is a smaller regional map, I wanted to do a wide more natural looking river by separating the landmass on either side with it’s own poly. Normally, I would use the Color Key effect for this, but since I’ve made changes to the Hue and added an RGB Matrix to the Land Sheet, the Color Key will not work, as I am yet to figure out so far, as it cannot adjust your color to the effects on the sheet.

As my usual suggestion, chose the varicolored symbols so you can go back later, if you want, and change this map simply by changing the symbol colors, to a different season. When creating my mountainscape of the valley, I soon realized I wanted more muted leaf colors for my palette and began altering the colors by using the Define Color option, where you can then create your own custom colors. After creating a custom color you should then save and attach it to your map. This can be done by going to the Drawing Properties tab or following File>Drawing Properties and click the attach to drawing tab under Custom Palette. Be sure to do this last step or when you close your map and reopen, it will revert back to the default palette for that style.

Once I had my custom palette set, I am able to place my symbols down, starting with mountains first and using the various shades I created for my autumn them = this gives the mountains, in my opinion, the illusion of them being covered with multicolored trees and grasses in lovely greens, oranges, yellows and reds. Then I do the same for forests, using individual trees or the smaller groups of trees in varying colors, landmarks and finally settlements.

Labeling has always been an issue for me….i just can’t ever seem to be happy with how I label my maps (which is why I am so very excited for Sue’s annual with banners coming up in 2021) – but, since I was going for a fall theme, I decided to stick with the same hues for labels, as well.
So, here’s my version of the Overland Tutorial annual, hope you like it and can use it or alter it for you own mapping needs 😊

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.

For anyone who hasn’t subscribed to the Annual 2021 yet, you can still do so at the early subscriber’s discount (15% off).

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!

With the bonus issue released the December Annual available as part of the free sampler, volume 14 of the Cartographer’s Annual is complete.

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.

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.

And there you have it. Japanese Temple Annual.

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.

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.

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.

This was a fun little map. With this month’s annual I decided I would do a section of the ruined city Shan Drag’Oth in my homebrew campaign. It is a cursed city of ruins in a valley of evil and desecration, so a dark, gloomy theme was a must. This annual fits in with the CD3 Bitmap B symbol set, so I stuck with those fills for this map.

(Download the FCW file)

I am not personally particularly fond of the fills for this set, and they are not as gloomy as I needed for the look I wanted, so I found myself using the RGB Matrix on multiple sheets, including the sheet with my trees on it…..surprisingly the RGB Matrix worked beautifully on the tree symbols (not the bushes for some reason, so I just shrunk down the trees and used them for bushes on a separate sheet). I used a setting Sue had provided for her Isometric Town annual and tweaked it a little for the exact look I wanted. Once I had the coloring down, I then added the Texturize effect, which I am a fan of, to multiple sheets to give the map a gritty look.

Along with changing the color of the trees for this map, as usual, I used the varicolored symbols so I can change their color at any time, which can dramatically change the look of a map very simply. The ruins symbols that our friend, the talented Pär Lindström created for this annual are a wonderful addition to the city set.

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.