[Award Winner] Step by Step workflow: Saventh-Yhi, City of the Seven Spears

NOTE: All these material is Copyright of Paizo Publishing LLC

Just found this forum and I'm posting this here to descrive its elaboration. I think some people may find interesting to see its process and also to hear a little about client-cartographer cartography.

I'll dig up some of these images and start posting them on the weekend

If you have any specific questions please do ask!

I'm pretty green in these forums -and not a native english speaker- so please bear with me :D

EDIT: Added the name and "north" sign.

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this is one of my favourites of yours.. good thing there's lots of pools in that map, i drool every time i look at it ;)

This is great, any chance you could give a little advice on how you did your houses?

I really dig the style of this. It's awesome!

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Originally Posted by Yandor

This is great, any chance you could give a little advice on how you did your houses?

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Will do! I'm digging up the images to do so.

Great map! And all tips you can share will be gladly received.

here we go these are the first three drafts I made for the editor to choose a layout:
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As you can relate with the final map, the chosen draft was #3. Many details were added to this draft after it was selected, then sent back again for approval before detailing it furter.

There was some element mixig with the final draft, taking some of the elements I liked the most from the first two drafts and mixing it into the final and more detailed draft.

BTW, I suppose is OK to post this in here since I feel this is more a step by step development other than a tutorial... I suck at explaining :P

It's fine to post it here! This is wonderful stuff, please keep going!

BTW, the 'My Cartography gallery' link in your sig seems to be broken.

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Originally Posted by ravells

BTW, the 'My Cartography gallery' link in your sig seems to be broken.

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Fixed it, thanks!

Now the final draft turns into sketch.

After I define the general layout of the terrain and place the "landmark" buildings, I start drawing the main roands that connect properly the whole city and then all blocks start falling into place. I like doing "odd" shapes with the block because there's alwas a "big rock" or other topographic feature that prevents straight lines and angles to shape your regular city.

Once I'm happy (and most important, the client is happy) with the sketch, I proceed to trace it digitally, starting again with the main topographic features.

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