Cartographers/Mappers Needed

[Daniel@Deepdark-Designs]

Hi there, thanks for checking out my post. I'll try to keep it brief but I'd like to give you a little bit of background before I jump into the specifics of what I'm looking for, if you'll indulge me. I recently founded a small/indie game design studio/publishing house called DeepDark Designs with several trusted friends. We've launched a handful of modestly successful products (4) and that's given us a little bit of capital to (hopefully) grow and expand into bigger and brighter things. Moving forward, our plans include switching to full-colour art (we used black-and-white previously), using a lot more art assets per product (about 32 pieces of character art or maps compared to about 12), and (more relevant for this post) incorporating cartography into our products for the first time. Consequently, I'm seeking cartographers/mappers (plural) to collaborate on these future projects. We've actually had two freelancers produce 11 maps for us already, and we've now got around 30-40 pieces of good-quality, full-colour, free-standing character illustrations completed (in addition to the black-and-white stuff and the stuff that's currently in development – which totals more than 150 pieces). We've also got around 10 large, high-quality examples of environmental/panel art for use in another, more premium project that should come out around the end of the year.

Our existing products are Legendary Adventures: Eastern Highlands, Legendary Adventures: Buried Alive, Legendary Adventures: Lost Ruins, and Legendary Adventures: Arctic Tundra. Our next four are Legendary Adventures: Harrowing Heights, Legendary Adventures: Quarantined, Legendary Adventures: Bloody Battlefronts, and Legendary Adventures: The Vind'l Svar.

These upcoming products could use quite a few maps in total and we have lots of ideas we'd love to bring to life. These would include one or two settlement maps and a couple of small regional maps, but would mostly be battle maps/tactical maps. I don't so much have a 'set' list of the maps we're hoping to get completed as I do a; list of those that we'd like to see done organised by priority, and a budget to get the most important ones finished. As a small business/indie publisher, our biggest priority right now is probably managing our budget wisely. Consequently, we're looking for 'okay' quality maps that closely match the briefs/design intent in each instance, and we're not seeking or expecting anything that might rival WotC or Paizo for example. We definitely favour cleaner/simpler maps over ones that are overly congested and end up looking tacky, so a somewhat minimalist approach would be a definite plus.

One thing that is important to us is finding cartographers who are willing to be a little bit flexible in their approach to 'briefs'. As stated above, we've commissioned several maps already and we've used a mixed approach with the briefs for these: some had very detailed information and were complete with detailed mock-ups, while in other cases we gave the cartographer a much more loose 'outline' of a location or idea and allowed them to bring it to life (generally far better than we ever could). If you'd strongly prefer one approach over the other, that's fine, it just means we need to try and find another freelancer who is happy to work the other way round to balance things out.

While I'm certain that we can't/don't pay the best, what I can say is that; A) we never ask an artist/illustrator to work 'for exposure' B) we're extremely prompt payers, C) we're very communicative throughout the creative process, D) we're quick to identify problems so that adjustments can be made early and time isn't wasted, E) we never ask for unnecessary adjustments/changes/revisions, F) we’re keen/willing to give a small handful of cartographers a steady volume of work (as we do with character illustrators presently). As a consequence, the artists we've worked with to date have universally ALL been keen to work with us again. We're hopeful that we'll have a similarly positive experience here.

Obviously there’s a million-and-one things I haven’t covered here, but what I’d like to do, if you lovely folks are amicable to it, is have you get in touch with me via PM here or by emailing me at Daniel@DeepDark-Designs.co.uk if you think you might be interested in discussing further and finding out more. I can send you some examples of briefs we’ve used, completed maps we’ve received, and provide a brief for you to quote based on. We’ll probably talk to a few cartographers to find someone who we feel is suited to the job and is in our budget. Once we’ve got some suitable candidates, I’d like to commission as many as possible for one map each to make sure that we’re a good fit for you, and vice versa. If there’s any problems, we’ll pay for the map in full and simply not collaborate again, that keeps things clean and simple for both parties. One thing you should be aware of is that we operate on the basis of ‘Work for Hire’ which means we would retain the rights to anything you create for us, however we’re happy for you to use such illustrations in a portfolio or send them to prospective clients as examples of your previous work.

Thanks for reading, looking forward to discussing with you guys further.

Daniel McDonald.

[J.Edward]

Hey Daniel, it sounds like something many would be interested in, myself included.
However, for you to use the PM system, you'll need to have more than 5 posts.
Even if that is just posting a few more times here in this thread, that will suffice.
It had to be implemented due to spammers and such.

Anyway, I sent you an email, since you wouldn't be able to see the PM yet.
Look forward to speaking further.
Cheers,
J

[jpstod]

email sent

[Daniel@Deepdark-Designs]

@J.Edward - Thanks for the tip, I misread the notice and thought I was only restricted from polls. Now noted. I just received you email (and several others as well), thanks for your swift response. It's really great to see such an active community here. I'll get back to you ASAP when I've had a chance to read through it properly.

@Jpstod - thanks for your email as well. I'll get back to you shortly also.

[Wired]

Mail sent.

[Daniel@Deepdark-Designs]

I've had some really great responses from a lot of terrific folks on here already. In talks with several cartographers at the moment but, even assuming each of those discussions pans out, I've still got several 'dungeon maps' or 'tactical / battle' maps to assign. If this sounds up your alley but you didn't see this post yesterday and figured you might be too late to get in touch, please don't hesitate to still do so (even if regional/settlement maps are your jam, we'd still like to hear from you).

[jpstod]

Rejected...

[Daniel@Deepdark-Designs]

Hi jpstod, I do apologise that we weren't able to collaborate with you on anything this time around. As I explained in my email, we've been contacted by several really good, really credible freelancers since making this post and we've commissioned several of them already (and we're in talks with several more still). I'm afraid on this occasion, we simply felt that you weren't priced competitively enough against others who had stronger portfolios, more in line with what we were looking for. I'm sorry to have wasted your time. Best of luck in the future, Daniel McDonald.

[Daniel@Deepdark-Designs]

I imagine that some folks are mildly interested in seeing what comes of posts/requests like this and that they're usually left to languish unresolved. For those that are interested, after discussing our needs with a great many of you on here, we have been able to offer multiple maps each to four cartographers who approached us and work is commencing on most of these from this weekend. After talking with so many credible cartographers, it's become clear to me that we were underestimating the value/cost of quality cartography, perhaps due to naivety or possibly out of optimism with regards what we were hoping to achieve/accomplish. With that in mind, we were able to distil our list of required maps down to a much more manageable dozen or so and invest much more of our budget in these to ensure that they come out to the best possible standard and that those we're working with are properly compensated for their time. I think spending time considering which maps are genuinely necessary to enhance a product, and which ones are superfluous or simply self-indulgent and unnecessary has been a really worthwhile lesson to learn. Overall, our experience with the cartographer's guild has been super positive so far.

I couldn't see how to change this thread to 'closed' if a mod sees this post, please feel free to do so. If you see this message and would be interested in working with DeepDark Designs, I'm certain that we'll be looking for mappers/cartographers again in the future so please keep an eye out for that, or else feel free to get in touch now and we can discuss it / keep you in mind for next time around. Thanks to everyone who took out the time to get in touch with me, Daniel McDonald.

[jpstod]

Ahhh..
curious how much they are making since I was to high at my price...