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Cartography
SkyCaptain
IndianaRegistered User regular
IndianaRegistered User regular
Since the only threads that show up when I search for cartography are both locked, I thought I'd make a new one.
That's currently my best map to date. It was done in Photoshop and the bulk of it took about six to eight hours, not counting the days, weeks, and months I've spent working on names for kingdoms, mountains, and other geographical points of interest. I'm hoping to get back into the swing of things after taking a long break from working on maps.
My next project is going to be a dungeon tileset for MapTool.
That's currently my best map to date. It was done in Photoshop and the bulk of it took about six to eight hours, not counting the days, weeks, and months I've spent working on names for kingdoms, mountains, and other geographical points of interest. I'm hoping to get back into the swing of things after taking a long break from working on maps.
My next project is going to be a dungeon tileset for MapTool.
The RPG Bestiary - Dangerous foes and legendary monsters for D&D 4th Edition
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I like it!
Are you gonna use it for something?
One thing I could say is that the typography of the names for each Island don't seem to mesh very well in to the map. The spacing between the letters for 'Drahkmar' seems quite odd when you look at 'The Midlands' right next to it. I would probably scap making the names follow the outline of each island and just use a normal horizontal alignment (and possibly make the type a bit smaller) and instead use some decorative element to establish visual heirachy. Maybe a scale too?
Although, giving it a second look, it does look like they are below the land. He may have left them out in an effort to keep the land clear of obstruction.
--why are your continents floating above a blue sky and clouds? Where is the actual ground? Are there any standing bodies of water?
--why does it look like you have an icecap in the Northwest, but is temperate on the same latitude in the East?
--not sure if that brown area to the South is barren or an arid South pole, but it looks like a mountain range with neither snowy peaks nor verdant valleys. And why are there are no deserts?
--and you named your Southeast mountain ranges the "unnamed mountains", which I find hilarious in a Pythonesque way. Is this kind of humor part of your world?
These are the questions, intentional or not, that come to mind when I look at this map. Of course, you want a reader/player of a fantasy world to look at a map and be curious with how much adventure and Really Wild Things must be going on to make a planet like that, but it's equally important to be intentional with your incongruities so the reader/player doesn't feel like they are in a completely arbitrary world.
Looks great, though. Clearly, I could stare at it for quite a while without my eyes bleeding, so thumbs up on the aesthetics.
I was looking at the map as if it was part of a Rand-McNally Atlas, and as far as clarity of communication, it performs wonderfully. But given this is a fantasy world, all maps would be made by hand (unless a Wizard Did It).
The problem there is that just about every "hand lettered" font winds up looking just as uniform as a regular one and they are usually harder to read.
Maybe hire a calligrapher?
1. no north arrow and scale bar. The reader has no idea about the distances and it is not clear if north is actually located slab-dab in the middle (which would make the Japanese themed islands east of it weird, as it ought to be pretty damned cold there...
2. Why is there a red-white border around it? Usually that colour combination is used to measure distances or is used as a warning...
3. Is this earth flat? Why do continents get cut off near the borders?
Two areas strike me as places you can improve:
1) Natural feel of topography. Before you start a map, draw your tectonic plates, feel where the land is stretching, clashing, receding, and what portions are the oldest and the youngest. Then draw your landmasses. Map making operates a lot like drawing people (or anything, really). Understanding what is beneath the surface makes it easier to make a more believable exterior. This way you'll have more real feeling topography. Right now, there are a ton of structures that make little sense geographically. The massive area of plains, for instance. What caused that region to be structured as it is? The thin range of mountains to the upper left of the map has more height than the entire plain, yet the land just collapses around it.
My suggestions would be to draw all of the topography, from the lowest seat to the tallest mountain, and then find your water line.
2) Air currents. Take a look at South America or Australia for a moment. Notice where the rain forests are and where the deserts are, why is that? Most mountain ranges (with plenty of exceptions) are quite wet on one side and quite dry on the other. Usually this is reflected in the drainage basins of each. Where does the air bring the water? Where does it stop? You'll have to figure these things out to create realistic vegetation. Also take a look at what biosphere is where on the globe. For example: most places at the equator are deserts unless they have a massive amount of flowing water or are islands or peninsulas with a lot of converging air currents to cause storms.
I would make cautions about checking names against existing fantasy themed worlds (Kadaj and Fairhaven are immediately noticabke) but as nothing is new under the sun, the names really don't matter overmuch and anything you put on there will be the same as some story or other.
Also curious about this.
Only 3 things jump out at me:
1. The candy cane border feels really out of place.
2. Some of the fonts you use, especially the large one with red and black, just feels blocky and awkward.
3. As was mentioned by someone else I have to assume that this is not the entire planet and just a portion of it because if it were the whole planet then continents wouldnt dissapear into the edge and not reapear on the other side etc. Thats cool if thats your goal, but if this is intended as the entire planet then it needs work.
Good start though mate. I like your rivers and trees as well as the realistic rendering of the sand dunes etc. Very cool.
Yeah, I noticed that too. Now all we need to know is does rain fall upwards?
Oh my god, they do. How did I not see that.
God damn it. There are floating continents in my fantasy world, too!
That's okay. I can come up with something else.
The clouds added some variation to the water, but I made them mostly just a multiply for coloration. I think the concept of using them as a reflection rather than just coloration has real merit, though, if he can find some way to make it look less like things flying and more like water reflections. Maybe add some distortions near the coastline to make it seem more watery?
I specifically chose the outlined / bevel style to make the names stand out. This is a map for DM's and players, not characters within the world itself. I do see the problem with the spacing on Drahkmar and the Midlands, but it's actually a common technique.
Scale & Direction
I had a compass rose and rhumb lines beneth the clouds at one point, but I scrapped them in favor of making the map look less cluttered. I am going with the assumption that the top of the map is the north. As for scale, I don't have a hard scale yet. I've narrowed it down to 30 days of travel on foot along roads between the major capitol cities of Bridwell, Karrow, Storm Keep, and Ravenna.
Floating Continents
Yes, they are floating. The campaign setting is set upon a massive gas giant that is nitrogen/oxygen rich. Basically the continents are massive shards of a former moon that was destroyed by a comet and an unsual formation of metal and other elements were fused together into a unique alloy that alters gravity itself. The Imperial Order of Amador discovered this alloy and learned to harness its wondrous properties. They also learned to manipulate the alloy through the proper application of arcane lighting to create engines that propelled airships through the sky.
Environmental / Climate
Tengoku and the Midlands (also known as Amador) are locked by the aetherium content of their skylands into a region of the planets upper atmosphere that provides northern-hemisphere temperate conditions for the most part. Although Tengoku is closer to Alpine while the southern regions of Amador and Kahandarak are more Tropical. Drahkmar lost its water table due to erosion and expanding cracks, sinkholes, and landslides that stripped massive amounts of vegetation away as well. Within a couple thousand years, the whole of Drahkmar will probably crumble into much smaller skylands that could create a massive problem for the people of Amador and Tengoku. The Frostfell sits at a much higher altitude where the thinner air creates a mountain-top year round wintry climate.
Slacktron -- The continents are several hundred miles above the boundry between the outer, gaseous shell of the planet and the inner core that is a hellish climate of high winds, burning rock, and high temperatures. In the campaign, that place is called the Abyss and is home to demons and devils. Native creatures that evolved on the planet and are well adapted to the conditions.
Aldo -- I just liked the red/white combination around the border since there's very little red in the map itself. For all purposes of travel, the planet is "flat". It would require several human lifetimes to make the journey around the entire planet. It's a massively huge gas giant.
Enc -- 1) This is not a world formed through tectonics. The skylands are shards of a shattered moon that have been worn down through erosion into the shapes they are now. Natural stress fractures and tidal forces from the planet itself have also helped shape the lands.
Enc -- 2) I know. I didn't really care to go into that much detail, but as an offhand explanation, the currents are very chaotic as these lands are trapped between two visible bands of eternal storms to the north and south. Like the bands of wind and storms you see on Jupiter. I realize all of this is highly improbable, but it's cool enough for me to want to create it.
Enc -- 3) As for the names, I have no idea where Kadaj is from, but honestly... all the good names have been used time and time again and I suck at coming up with names so once I find something good that works, I keep it throughout multiple campaigns on multiple worlds.
Tree Texturing
It's just a beveled noisy grayscale forest texture with some transparancy that I painted into an empty layer and added a Hue/Saturation layer on top of it so I could alter the color for different types of forest if I wanted to. It's actually just a variation of the technique used for the mountains. The mountains were done using Pasis' tutorial from the Cartographer's Guild forums. You basically use three layers and each one has a different bevel and emboss setting. The lower layers use a very soft brush with lots of transparancy and as you paint "up" the mountains, you decrease the size of the brush and decrease it's softness and transparancy.
With some practice, you can paint entire continents worth of mountain ranges in 10-15 minutes. A tablet makes it soooooo much easier to do the mountains and forests, but mine is dead. Damned cat knocked over a can of Mt. Dew onto it.
For starters gratz on a cool map.
Some things that come to mind:
* The grass/plains are a uniform colour. From a height like that you'd see a spectrum of greens, greys and browns. At the moment it just seems a bit felt-ish.
* Are all the coninents at the same altitude? No doubt it would be awkward to include perspective if one continents was km's (or miles if you prefer) higher than another. However it would probably make for a more interesting world if all the land wasn't on the same horizontal plane.
2 - No, they're not at the same altitudes. Frostfell is the highest, approximately 20km higher than Tengoku, which is 5km or so above the Midlands. Drahkmar is about the same as the Midlands. There are also hundreds and thousands of much smaller skylands at various altitudes both above and below the major continents. Also, the Frostfell is called by many the White Scar, since it's completely covered in snow and ice and may or may not be entirely made of ice.
Not to mention what lurks beneath... that's a whole nother map I haven't drawn yet.
Other than that, I can't offer more than anyone else already has. Maps are not my specialty :P
While I dig the Japanese continent, something you might want to consider is keeping that theme consistent with the rest of your lands. Something I find very impressive in a campaign is if there are consistent linguistic patters on the lands. Do the people in the jungle area speak the same language as the folk in the forest/grassland area on the top left? While there is definitely a language convention in the Japanese region, the rest of the world seems to be using the same high-fantasy common language. While this is still very awesome, it makes the Japanese specific area look out of place. If you had other trends based by regions, this might be less noticeable.
I like to use Behind the Name's random tool to select names and language themes for regions. Ice country? Maybe use something that evokes that feel like Russian or Baltic language. Etc etc.
Are all of the continents at the same altitude/static distance from each other? That might make for a more dynamic setting if you have them stacked. Maybe Drakma lost its water by being too high for water vapor to rain on it, etc etc.
For anyone that has trouble making their own maps. I actually plan to use this for my campaign for smaller scale maps of the kingdoms.
An example of a map created using the free version of Hexographer linked above. The river and text was added in photoshop, but Hexographer has its own tools for that as well.
/nitpicking.
But you know, this is ridiculous nitpicking, it's a functional map that looks pleasant and gives the audience a clear idea of what's going on.
Decided to start building a new campaign and went with a traditional setting. I also decided to use an atlas style on the map instead of the painterly I used for Heaven's Gate. Rather than fill the world in with mountains, forests, and rivers... I'm going to purchase the stand-alone version of Hexographer with the alternate set of map symbols and start detailing the entire world one section at a time.
It's a very, very long term project.
I haven't decided however, whether I'm going to use a "zone" like mapping style that MMO's use or if I'll go more realistic. I'm leaning towards MMO style geography since that would lend itself better to a West Marches style campaign with multiple DM's.