My First Mapping Project

[tjbuege]

Ok, I've been encouraged to post some work. This is my first attempt at a mapping project using Illustrator and Photoshop. I will be starting up an RPG with my kids soon, and it would be nice ... no, necessary ... to have some maps to go on. I have a rough idea what I want the region to look like. The campaign won't depend a lot on what the world looks like at first, so some of the details will be filled in later.

I've always liked the large rough central inland lakes dominating the landscape, so I decided to start with that theme. I spent some time searching Google Earth for an appropriate lake to copy/emulate, and I found one in New Zealand that I think is perfect.

I did a screen capture of the lake, pulled it into Illustrator, and using the Pen tool, outlined it. Once that was done, I added a couple rivers, filled it, and saved it out as a jpg. I will pull this into Photoshop as the basis of my map. Note, I rotated the lake a bit, to my liking.

I haven't decided what the final map will look like yet. This will be a learning experience. Comments are welcome and wanted.

-Tim