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Thread: My first map: looking for critique [Hand Drawn]

  1. #1
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    Wip My first map: looking for critique [Hand Drawn]

    Hello everyone! About 2 months ago I started GM;in a fantasy campaing set in my own world. After a couple of meetings i decided to make a mpa over the world so that the player could easier understand the lay of the land.

    So i first made a ROUGH sketch using the game Dwarf Fortress: The game generates a realistic world. All rivers have a function, all mountains are placed along continental rifts and all forest are realistically ''grown''

    It turned out like this: http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m...050--10081.jpg

    After that I made another rough draft using CC3: http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m...krish/DD30.png

    Then i started painting, it turned out quite well. The map is not really done yet but i'm already planning my next one and getting comissions from other GM;s to make thier maps! The detailed picture is of Corinia, Chudar and Middland (the main area of questing for my group.)





    So what do you think? As said this is my first map so don't be to rude

    MVH Johan IV

  2. #2
    Community Leader Lukc's Avatar
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    I think it looks great, but then I always have a penchant for hand drawn maps. So long as you keep your style consistent, practically anything works. A thing I would recommend is to pay attention to your labelling a bit more and the results will look even better. Ravells has a great guide to label placement in his signature, while a simply trick right off the bat is to use a ruler to keep all your labels on a single level when you write them. For instance, your Corinia label goes up and down more than it should, so a simple pencil line underneath it would help you write it out straight. That's how I do most of my hand-lettering.

    Cheers!

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    Quote Originally Posted by Lukc View Post
    I think it looks great, but then I always have a penchant for hand drawn maps. So long as you keep your style consistent, practically anything works. A thing I would recommend is to pay attention to your labelling a bit more and the results will look even better. Ravells has a great guide to label placement in his signature, while a simply trick right off the bat is to use a ruler to keep all your labels on a single level when you write them. For instance, your Corinia label goes up and down more than it should, so a simple pencil line underneath it would help you write it out straight. That's how I do most of my hand-lettering.

    Cheers!

    Yes, I have been working on my calligraphy since I made the map and when i make the 2.0 version the labeling will be better The main reason for the shoddy labeling is that the paper I use doesn't take kindly to erasers; the mark never disappears no matter how lightly you draw.

    Where can I find this guide you speak of?

    BTW this is my latest calligraphy project, in Swedish unfortunaly :


  4. #4

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    Lovely work. I very much enjoy seeing hand made maps and this one is quite attractive. Look forward to seeing more on this.

    Cheers,
    -Arsheesh

  5. #5
    Community Leader Lukc's Avatar
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    I apologise for not linking to it before ... time pressure. Anyway, here it is. A trick you could do is to use a lightboard (a transparent table with a source of light below) and put the ruler (or rather, a sheet of paper with dark black lines) beneath your map - so you can see the lines to write on. Hey presto, labels without pencil marks!

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    Community Leader Guild Sponsor Gidde's Avatar
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    Hiya zekrish, that's looking pretty cool! As for your pencil not erasing, I had the same problem for a long time. It turns out that it was because I was using light pencil. It's counter-intuitive: if you use the harder pencils, they're really light but do not erase at all. I switched to a softer, darker pencil and it erases fine!

  7. #7
    Guild Expert rdanhenry's Avatar
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    You've got some nice artistry there, but you've also got crazy rivers. I recommend you do some reading of this thread: http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...he-right-place. Rivers seem to be the most common tripping point realism-wise for new mappers.

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