professional cartographer wanted!

[Andhor]

the base texture is really nice. The mountains are too "...." ( i dont know how to describe :-)). This one looks really cool: http://www.fantasticmaps.com/Gallery...nal/Island.jpg . But should be colorized.

Anyways, who would like to paint a small test map?

[torstan]

Thanks! As for the colour ... well the request from the client was black and white - so that's why it wasn't coloured. I have a commission at the moment that is in that style and in colour, so you're not alone in thinking that would be cool.

As for the Ironcrags map, if you're not sold on the mountains (they are too much one solid ridge, they need more individual peaks) then there are adaptations that are easy to make. Note that the current map of Morgau and Doresh in this month's Kobold Quarterly is an example of a newer version of this style with, I hope, better mountains. I can't post it here, because it's just released and I don't have permission yet. However if you are interested you can send me an email to the above email address and I'll make sure I can get permission from Wolfgang to send it to you privately.

Before any sort of discussion of tests, can you tell us more about the project? How much are you willing to pay per map? What's the timescale? What will the maps be used for? How detailed is the work that the cartographer will be working from?

On an associated note, I think you'll find that in general artists are not too inclined to do unpaid tests. If you can't tell whether someone will fit from their portfolio then it's reasonable to ask one person to run off a quick sample to make sure, but to ask an entire community to do work for free when you will pick only one or none of the artists then you are asking for a significant investment of time for no guarantee of reward. That's not particularly appealing. If you really want people to test out, then I'd suggest finding a couple of people that you like the style of (perhaps by browsing the finished maps thumbnail pages) and contact them directly (you need 5 posts before you can use private messages for this). Ask them first whether they have anything that fits your description and if you still need a test then make it very clear how close you are to signing them up for the project.

If you do want this to be an open test then please post here what people are testing for. For example there's no point in me investing an afternoon of my time creating a test piece for you to find out that you need it for the middle of November when I have 3 commissions due already. On the other hand this is a very friendly community and you'll certainly get interested parties if you post here with an enthusiastic description of your project that gets people excited. I look forward to hearing more about your project.

[Ramah]

Well I had a few hours this afternoon so I already knocked up a rough test map to see if I could do something in a similar style to the first image you posted.

This is what I came up with so far...



But that new image you posted changes the game somewhat as the first image is nothing like the second one so that's kinda mixed signals right there.
I presume you have trawled through the completed maps and searched for a map in a similar style to what you are looking for?

My own usual style is for a hand-drawn type map but unfortunately nothing like Torstan's that you posted. Here is my latest WIP just in case...

[torstan]

Ramah: that second map he posted was one from my site, not (I think) an example of the style he wanted emulated.

That second map is a stunner by the way. I'll have to check that out.

[Ramah]

Ramah: that second map he posted was one from my site, not (I think) an example of the style he wanted emulated.

Ah, right. No problems then.

And thank you.