Pucklechurch and its Surrounding Hexes

[RobertWinslow]

I was asked by author Alexander Wales to put together a map for their web serial This Used to be About Dungeons.

The author sent me this sketch and asked me to make it "comfy-looking, vibrant, and adventuresome".:


Here is the latest version of my rendition (Now with seasonal variants):
### Latest WIP ###


This is the first time I've made a map like this, so in addition to the map progress itself, there are also some experiments with map styling that I'd like to share in the following posts.

[RobertWinslow]

Here are a few tests of different styles for rendering hills.

Here are the classic icon-based hills, which is what I think I'll stick with:


Here's an attempt to recreate the hachure-based hill markings seen on maps from the early 1900s. I think it turned out well, but isn't a fit for this style of map.


And here's some sort of Mario-looking thing:

[Peter Toth]

Hello RobertWinslow!

Although I'm not an expert with your style of map, I'm nonetheless interested in helping you improve its design. Personally, I liked the very first submission, before you added those terraces to substitute for your mountains. Overall, I believe you've met your client's specification that the map be comfy-looking, vibrant, and adventuresome, but I believe you could add to its effectiveness with a border, a scale, and perhaps a few other embellishments such as a flag or other graphic pertaining to your employer's website "This Used to be About Dungeons." Congratulations on your interest in world-building and try to seek out feedback whenever you can, even when sometimes that feedback can be very elusive. By the way, what software are you using? Just curious. At any rate, I hope I've helped you. Perhaps other members will follow suit and take on an interest in this very fascinating map style. Cheers!

Peter

[RobertWinslow]

Hey Peter,

Thanks for the response.

...Personally, I liked the very first submission, before you added those terraces to substitute for your mountains... I believe you could add to its effectiveness with a border, a scale, and perhaps a few other embellishments such as a flag or other graphic pertaining to your employer's website "This Used to be About Dungeons."...
Peter

I agree with both of these comments. I'll be sticking with the first style for the hills.
I plan to add the border, scale, title, etc. last, after finalizing everything else. I also want to add some other cute little embellishments. Little critters dotted around the place. Stuff like that.

...By the way, what software are you using? Just curious....
Peter

I'm making the bulk of this map using QGIS 3.16. Its intended use is for mapping real-world data, but it's also handy for drawing fantasy maps for the following reasons:

• Firstly, compared to Inkscape or Illustrator, it is easier to draw and edit organic vector shapes. QGIS has some fantastic built-in tracing tools, and it's polygon-smoothing algorithm has much nicer results than Inkscape's.
• Secondly, there is better control over the layers and rendering. And fancy stuff can be done with metadata.
• Finally, the styling of entire groups of objects can be edited at once, which is great for someone as chronically indecisive as me. As an example, both the hachure-style and terrace-style hills up above are rendered from the same polygon data. They just have different styles applied.

However, QGIS does have a few weaknesses that make it unsuitable as the only tool for drawing a map:

• The main issue is that QGIS' text placement is a bit janky and often needs some manual adjustment.
• Additionally, while QGIS has a built in Print Layout editor -- where borders, scales, titles, and the like can be added -- it feels fairly limited.

The solution I've found is to export the map from QGIS as a pdf. This pdf can then be imported as vector or raster into other artistic software for finishing touches.

[RobertWinslow]

Here's a fairly simple fantasy forest styling effect in QGIS:


The neat thing is that the underlying polygon can be edited and no restyling needs to be done.

Here's an alternate version of the same concept:


The tree trunks are an offset marker outline. Then the interior foliage effect consists of a bunch of randomly placed little circles with outlines, underneath a smaller number of larger circles without outlines.
There are a lot of circles, so it takes a while for the layer to render any time the canvas is updated, but QGIS seems to handle it pretty gracefully.

[RobertWinslow]

Here's another update.

The town of Liberfell has had its icon added. There's a few small tweaks here and there. But the two largest changes are of course:

• The frame, which is meant to look as if we're peering down through clouds at a sleepy countryside.
• The flower fields in two of the hexes.

To create the flower fields, I did the following:

1. First, in an outside program, I created several different colors of flower icon.
2. In QGIS, I used a processing tool to generate a field of regular, but randomly offset points.
3. I rearranged and overlapped these points to get the placement patterns of the flowers.
4. In the metadata for the table, I gave each point a random integer flag using "rand(1,6)", and associated each integer with a different flower icon.
5. To add a bit more visual variation, I also gave each point a randomly generated size flag, and then changed the symbol to render using that variable instead of a fixed number of units.

[RobertWinslow]

One of my design decisions was to keep the final image to 8.5x11 inches. That way, I can easily print out the map.

I made a color copy at the library, and showed it to someone else. The main issues were:

• Some of the rivers are too smooth. They contrast with the organic jagginess of the forests and so on.
• The flower fields look very nice, but the viewer thought they were cities. I need to fiddle with the flower icons somehow to make their nature more clear. Perhaps changing their color scheme, adding a bit more visible leafy green. Maybe intersperse some grass among the flowers. Something like that.

[Rubikia]

I like this a lot! Great job

[Marcolino]

your map is already so good. Look forward to see finished.

[Arimel]

This looks really good. The racoons are amazing!

You may have a bit of a transparency layer issue on the Orch mines. To me it looks a tad odd at the moment.