Share your early maps!

[Hjorimir]

All of my early maps are long gone (and looking at the art you all are posting) that's probably a good thing. Amazing talent here.

[Bombastus]

All of my early maps are long gone (and looking at the art you all are posting) that's probably a good thing. Amazing talent here.

You just inspired me to go back and uncover the terrible mspaint maps I made back in High School.

I'd been bouncing around the idea for a story based in an isolated valley, surrounded on all sides by impassible mountains. The outside world had developed to a WW1-level of technology, and the outsider main character ends up in the valley due to a plane crash or something. Honestly, I don't really remember that well.

The thing was, magic existed in the valley but nowhere else, so the story was going to feature a juxtaposition of the relative technological savvy of the MC with the magical culture within the valley. Nothing ever came of the story, and I never wrote a word of it down, as far as I remember.

Anyway, to find the maps, I had to
1. Find the ancient laptop they were saved in
2. Figure out how to log in to the damn thing
3. Take pictures of the screen with the camera, because my brother warned me against connecting the laptop to anything. Something about owning the laptop as a teenager and porn malware.

Look what you made me do! I hope you're proud of yourself.







As you can see, there was a bit of a progression in the maps, but the overall idea remained the same. Inaccessible valley surrounded by mountains with a large lake in the middle. The latter versions had a particularly large mountain in the southern half with a broken crown. I think the big bad was supposed to lair there or something? I don't really remember why I included it tbh.

[Jaxilon]

Due to this months awesome Challenge and my commissioning Ramah to do a map of my game world I was forced to do some digging and found one of my earliest maps. This baby goes back decades! I'm talking 25/30 years or more.

I clearly didn't understand about how rivers work and so for those of you who may have had me mention your rivers this shows I'm speaking from experience. I too used to murder them.

I know this early map of mine was influenced by the maps in the Sword of Shannara series by Terry Brooks. Along with the Elfstones, these had a bit to do with my world dreamings at the time.

Somewhere I know I had some updates to this, like corrected rivers and lakes but I think they are on another hard drive that hasn't been setup since my move last year. Therefore, I'm going to have Ramah redo this with plenty of freedom to stretch things around, manipulate land plates and so on. I'm not even sure I still like all the names although some of them are canon with my group now. Good lord those rivers bug me something fierce now, they are terrible.

Included in my request were some things that need to be conveyed in the new map that are not on this old one. Over the decades this world has been played in so there are stories tied to specific areas such as the quickly scribbled in "Spire" on the sw corner.
I also gave a short summary of the world backstory, the races and a few specifics to help capture the feel the map should give. Mostly this is just so much GM notes and I'm psyched to see Ramah translate it into something super awesome. I'll say no more here.

Suffice to say I think I've come a long way as far as map making goes.

[Tiana]

I finally found it! My first map, done in probably October or November 2006 for my second Nanowrimo attempt (which got 100k but never finished). As I recall the planet had an extremely long rotation causing an extended period of nightfall which continually got forgotten by the more mortal inhabitants of the world because it was so brutal it would kill most of them off, and then the extended lifespan people would reseed the lands, but it focused on a human, Scarecrow, and an elf who was helping him try to escape, and their subsequent journey across the continent meeting all kinds of weird enclaves of creatures which could survive in the night. But it's very unclear memories by now. If this isn't proof that anyone can draw a good map with enough persistence and practice, I dunno what is.

I think my favorite parts include the top left where I was apparently just like "WHATEVER I'M SICK OF MAKING COASTLINE WOOSH" or maybe I was trying to be clever and imply that there was a sunken enormous mechanical item there...? It's just... so smooth compared to everything else. Also how I was apparently just like "okay I know how the watershed works because I wrote where they cross a river here and there and about a lake there" so there's the one detailed part and then the rest is just like EHH WHATEVER MAYBE A RIVER HERE?? Then there's the floaty rocks in the bottom corner which are awesome but have no reason to be there because the story never went there at all.

It has some good energy to it, but yeah... it's not great... and I knew that then which is why it was never digitized until now.

Anyway, you can do anything if you actually want to do it and put your mind to it and repeatedly do it over and over and over and over and over again. If I had looked at this and decided "yeah this is crap" I wouldn't be where I am today, but instead I was like "well this works as a guide for my writing right now but I want to do a map again later but better".

[CharaAzon]

Not my first, but is my terrible attempt to do one on the computer. i have since learned i like to hand draw my maps

[Caenwyr]

Anyway, to find the maps, I had to
1. Find the ancient laptop they were saved in
2. Figure out how to log in to the damn thing
3. Take pictures of the screen with the camera, because my brother warned me against connecting the laptop to anything. Something about owning the laptop as a teenager and porn malware.

What malware? You used a word there I'm not familiar with

Seriously though, glorious maps! I spent a good part of my youth bent over scraps of paper with basically the same type of map - that and a bunch of ink splotches

Also, many of the early maps on this thread are not too different from the sketches I (and probably many other cartographers) get sent in by clients. They're definitely full of detail already, and all they lack is a little TLC to make them pop! I'm happy to see that many of you have kept going back to your early maps and given them just the TLC they needed. This is how we learn!

[Gamerprinter]

Until I joined the Cartographers' Guild, I've never digitally scanned nor saved the files to maps I created at anytime prior to joining. I have nothing to show from before. You want to see my early maps, look at my challenge maps, or maps I posted in 2007 and 2008, here at the CG... those are my early maps.

[Tiana]

Also, many of the early maps on this thread are not too different from the sketches I (and probably many other cartographers) get sent in by clients. They're definitely full of detail already, and all they lack is a little TLC to make them pop! I'm happy to see that many of you have kept going back to your early maps and given them just the TLC they needed. This is how we learn!

Yeah, my early maps look EXACTLY like most of my client sketches, which is why whenever I see a particularly good example from a potential client I encourage them to consider spending a few more hours working on it digitally, because it's not a lot harder to get into than any other kind of digital art. Of course anyone can hire me if they want to, but it's also nice when people, especially the ones with low budgets and big visions, learn to do what they want to see themselves.

While yes, when I first made that map, I guarantee I had no idea how to get the results I do now, it was a stepping stone to getting to these results.

Some of my client sketches are much much worse than what I see in this thread and THOSE are the people who need help... Perhaps no amount of learning will help them make a nice piece of design, because they are not passionate about it, they like writing more than drawing and they know that it takes three days by foot to get from here to there, and two days by horse to get over there because they wrote that in their novel, but no idea how to make that actually WORK.

[Marc Moureau]

Here's an early one, not the earliest but the first I had to draw for a commission.

Not the most useful either, its only purpose was to decorate the game board.

[JoshStolarz]

Still looks pretty cool Marc. I bet it would look cool on a game board

- Josh