We’ve just made the April issue of the Cartographer’s Annual 2012 available. Enjoy a beautiful new overland style created by Herwin Wielink. It’s the first time you see his art in the Annual, but it won’t be the last!
If you haven’t subscribed to the Annual 2012 yet, check out more information on this issue on the Annual website.
Here’s a preview for Sunday’s upcoming Annual issue. Herwin Wielink‘s beautiful overland style:
A little peek at the work-in-progress on one example map for the March Annual:
Also, a little sneak peek at the April issue:
While creating an example pdf for the February Annual issue, I accidentally printed it in grayscale. I thought the result has quite a charm of its own:
The February issue of the Annual 2012 elaborates on a style introduced in Cosmographer 3: The satellite view overland map. This large-scale, straight overhead style evokes the view a satellite might have on the landscape below. Seamlessly-tiling textures are smoothed together through sheet effects to create the image of an unbroken, natural landscape.
The source for the textures is taken from public domain images made available by NASA through their Visible Earth website. The texture are carefully crafted from these originals and made into CC3 bitmap fill styles.
While it served as an inspiration, Cosmographer 3 is not required to make full use of this style. See the Annual 2012 site for more information on this style.
Check out this large-scale (A2) example map created in the Annual Overland Satellite style.
The February issue is available for subscribers now!
The final Annual issue for 2011 is here: A combined texture pack for Fractal Terrains 3 and Campaign Cartographer 3. Give your FT world a new look with the textured climate shader or draw climate maps of your regions in CC3.
Stay tuned for the Cartographer’s Annual 2012!
We’ve just released the October Annual for subscribers to download: A beautiful map style inspired by classic fiction treasure maps. It allows users to easily create handouts for their game and set their players on the trail of that elusive treasure hoard.
September 2011: Military Operations
Due to after-GenCon demands and vacation times, we didn’t get around to posting about the September Annual when it was released. Here is sneak peek at the military operations type maps that can be created with its included style.
Our Annuals are designed to give value year after year – as an example, I give this flashback to May 2008 from my livejournal…
Many of us remember, and were inspired by Pete Fenlon’s wonderful maps for the Middle Earth Roleplaying Game. Today, Pete is Chairman and Studio Director at Mayfair Games. In January 2008, with Pete’s permission we released a style pack for making maps in his style as part of the Cartographer’s Annual 2008.
Steve Townshend produced this beautiful map in the Pete Fenlon style.
It uses only specially designed vector symbols combined with CC3’s effects to get the right look.
Style packs are preconfigured so that if you select a tool (for example, rivers, roads and terrain), it looks right for the map style. To create a forest, you just select the forest draw tool, click points for the border, and it does this, adding random tree tops and edge trees.
You building up mountain ranges by selecting a symbol, then placing. They are selected randomly from a collection of symbols. So this was one click per mountain, and the mess at the bottom is a mountain cursor. You can tab through random styles if you don’t like the current mountain at the cursor.
The distinctive ridges are also built up of symbols. On the left, with CC3 effects off, on the right, with them on.
Although the styles definitely make it easier to create maps such as these, Steve Townshend demonstrates that the human touch is still required to get an aesthetically pleasing map – style packs just make it easier to get the desired effect.
You can download the map in CC3 format here.
The January issue: A new drawing style
We’ve just released the September issue of the Annual 2010. While also including a complete new style based on the work of fantasy cartographer Robert Altbauer, the accompanying tutorial focuses on how to convert Photoshop brushes into CC3 symbols catalogs. The quick and easy process opens up a whole lot of material to use in CC3, as there are many free-to-use brushes available on the web.
The included style uses a serial of brushes for mountains and hills, made available on the Cartographers’ Guild forum. Here is the example map created with the new style:
And here's a sample of the Mountain symbol catalog created from a Photoshop Brush:
