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Thread: Cloister Island

  1. #1
    Guild Adept Facebook Connected xpian's Avatar
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    Map Cloister Island

    Earlier this year I came across an on-line map-making contest sponsored by ProFantasy.com, makers of great cartography software for role-playing games. Make an island, they said, about three miles across. Something like a medieval treasure map. The contest had been open for months, but was closing in just a few days. I decided to give it a shot.

    As judged by Mike Schley (the man, the legend...and someone whose maps I've been admiring for years) my map took the top prize.

    I worked feverishly, right up to the deadline, and as usual I ran out of time to put everything I wanted into the map. That's why there's no border around it, and no compass rose... But what I did manage to produce followed my vision. I wanted to have some storytelling elements that would blend with the drawing. Some secrets or clues that would only be available to those who looked closely. And an overall aesthetic that was vivid and eye-catching.

    Here's what Mike said:
    "Of all the submissions, I felt that the Cloister Island map functioned best as both a visual information system and an inspiring illustration of its setting. Even though the cartographer left off a compass rose and scale bar, the overall work felt the most coherent and provided numerous levels of information. Like an onion, the island and story revealed themselves in layers, giving the reader an opportunity to explore deeper and deeper into an immersive world. On top of this, I’m a sucker for hand drawn isometric maps." --Mike Schley

    Here are some notes regarding my process for this map:
    Virtually all of this map was hand-drawn in ProCreate on an iPad 3 using an Adonit Touch stylus. There are a few "pattern brushes" in that app which help with things like the the jungle trees and the ocean waves, but everything else is just drawn. The shape of the island and mountains isn't based on anything other than doodling with the idea of a vaguely volcanic tropical island in mind.

    The cloister overhead plan was laid out in Adobe Illustrator. It's far larger, sharper, and more detailed in the original file, with many upper floors and basement dungeon levels. The "3D" isometric extrusion of the cloister is actually just faux-3D, a technique I use in Illustrator where I take the overhead plan and rotate, squash, duplicate and move by a certain amount, and then blend. I took a screen shot of that and traced over it in ProCreate.

    The last step was to bring it all into Adobe Photoshop, create a "parchment background", lay out the various pieces, and add in the text elements. Then I did save-for-web and picked settings that looked good but kept the resulting file under 2 MB.

    The cloister itself is about 300 feet on one axis, making the hypotenuse around 500 feet. Since you can line up 30 of the little cloister images end to end and have them stretch from one side of the island to the other, the island winds up being about 3 miles across.

    Click image for larger version. 

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    Open to cartographic commissions. Contact me: christian [at] stiehl.net
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  2. #2
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    Still no Like buttons, but an awesome map!

  3. #3
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    The island looks nice. The view and the floor plan of the cloister could have blend better on the map though. Also like I said on a previous map of yours, I'm not a big fan of the rivers on top of the forests.

  4. #4
    Guild Adept fabio p's Avatar
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    I really like it but for my tastes there's a little issue with rivers flowing in forests they seem on top of the forests.
    Otherwise great job.

  5. #5
    Guild Adept Facebook Connected xpian's Avatar
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    Thanks for the feedback. I did this one many months ago, but I'm definitely taking the note about the look of the rivers sitting on top of the forests. I'll have a solution to that in upcoming maps.
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    Open to cartographic commissions. Contact me: christian [at] stiehl.net
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  7. #7
    Guild Artisan Francissimo's Avatar
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    Very interesting workflow for that one, and those mountains... gorgeous!

  8. #8

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    Nice map! I agree with Francissimo about the mountains, and the Cloister's plan is well done as well.

  9. #9

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    Really nice map. Any way to fit in a map of the upper levels? (The 3-D picture of the cloister suggests there's about 20% more rooms than shown.)

    --Eric

  10. #10
    Guild Adept Facebook Connected xpian's Avatar
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    But Eric, I'm so busy working on this elvish town and dwarvish dungeon complex at the moment...

    I do have a bunch of levels already laid out both above and below what's seen here, but I'd want to make them look as nice as possible...but here is a PDF of the complex that I put together for Ari Marmell a few months ago after he asked on Facebook for someone to help him with a dungeon/castle layout for an upcoming session of his personal campaign.

    It's not nearly cleaned up enough to be presentable, but I could share it here:

    (nine-page PDF)
    Click image for larger version. 

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    Last edited by xpian; 12-02-2014 at 09:11 PM.
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    Open to cartographic commissions. Contact me: christian [at] stiehl.net
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