I'm glad you found your way over here from EN World, Sirith! I've always enjoyed seeing your maps there.
Welcome to the Guild!
Hello people of the Cartographers' Guild.
About half a year ago I discovered the fun of drawing maps. I usually draw other things (people mostly), but I enjoy this new subject in my creative endeavours, en hope you enjoy my maps as well.
Decided to share with you two maps I did relatively recently. They are both fully digitally done in Painter, including line art and painting. Although I like traditionally done things better, digital media are easier to colour things (at least to me), so this was my tool of choice.
Both also have a minimum amount of layers. Ideally I have a layer for the line art, another for the water and finally one for the land. And I have also thrown a simple parchment texture from stock.xchng on top of both maps as a finishing touch. My painting is usually very smooth, and I think a texture looks better.
First is done for 3point75.org magazine. Really happy with this one (a more readable version is in the magazine, decided I didn't want to spoil it too much)
Second map is just a bunch of isles with a whole lot of mountains, impulsively called Isles of Fuar, with 'fuar' being the Irish Gaelic word for 'cold'. I included two close-ups of my favourite parts. I didn't label anything, nor placed cities, as I feel this needs some worldbuilding about the people etc. While this was mostly meant as practise in the technique department.
Actual realism in geography is not guaranteed
I'm glad you found your way over here from EN World, Sirith! I've always enjoyed seeing your maps there.
Welcome to the Guild!
jaerdaph
JUST ADD HEROES An ICONS Superpowered Roleplaying Game Blog by Joe "jaerdaph" Bardales
Welcome to the group. I like you maps.
Daniel the Neon Knight: Campaign Cartographer User
Never use a big word when a diminutive one will suffice!
Any questions on CC3? Post them with CC3 in the Subject Line!
MY 'FAMOUS' CC3 MAPS: Thunderspire; Pyramid of Shadows; King of the Trollhaunt Warrens; Demon Queen's Enclave
So glad you came over! I really like the minimalist style of your maps--a great combo of hand drawn and computer colored/crafted maps. Very, very good. I hope you contribute tons here and learn just as much.
PS: If you ever made a short tutorial of your method, I'll bet others would laud you for it, too!
Don
My gallery is here
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"Keep your mind in hell, but despair not." --Saint Silouan [1866-1938]
Hi Sirith and welcome to the Guild. I really love your first map. It's so deceptively simple, beautiful and effective - and it immediately suggests a story and an individual stye. As Don said - a tutorial would be very welcome!
Thanks for the welcome and the comments, I'm glad you like my maps
pyrandon > I hope to learn a whole lot here, as well. It's nice to have a place devoted to mapmaking, I have been looking around here for a while and some maps are just inspirational and plain awesome.
What exactly do you mean with minimalist style? I'm not really sure I understand what you mean..
ravells > Thanks for the comment, the most useful ones are those where people tell you what they see and feel when looking at a piece (be it art or maps or whatever) IMHO. So, thank you
Also, I could make a walkthrough of sorts. I usually make a whole lot of wip-saves, because Painter is not always 100% stable (and you'll always see that when you decide that it's not going to happen anyway, that the program freezes and the save is corrupted ). So I could put something together. I'll take a look at it
I'd love to see a walkthough Sirith, I have painter but I very rarely use it which is a real shame.
What I mean by "minimalist" is that your lines are fairly clean and separated, and the coloring is basic. These are not "busy" maps with two million symbols and color changes and such, and so they could fall into the "plain" category (or worse yet, "boring"), but they do not: they maintain interest and pleasure in their basic, good cartography!
Hey: if you did a walk-thru in Painter that would be awesome! We have nothing in the Guild to my knowledge using Painter, and I'm sure others would really appreciate that software's presence (and even if not, people like me who just plain old love tutorials would like to see you "at work"!)
Don
My gallery is here
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"Keep your mind in hell, but despair not." --Saint Silouan [1866-1938]
Ah, that makes sense . I'm glad I found the balance in these maps between being simple yet maintaining interest, I hope I can retain and push this aspect.
I'll gladly make a walkthrough, I know I always love seeing tutorials and walkthroughs by other people
Also, mind if I add you to my friends list on DA?
(I know I'm gonna feel real stupid for asking this when I see the response, but --gulp--what's DA?..)
Don
My gallery is here
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"Keep your mind in hell, but despair not." --Saint Silouan [1866-1938]