New to the realm.
Hey all, Stumbled across this site a few months ago, and I must say...WOW. this is about the coolest site for fantasy nuts that i've ever seen. I am 37 years old and have been an avid fantasy reader and roleplayer for more than 20 of those years, and in all my campaigning iI have always loved mapmaking. When I pick up a new novel, I always go for the map section (if there is one) first. I have been hand drawing maps since junior high, and honestly never realized the potential for digital development. You guys have opened my eyes to a whole new level of my hobby. As I figure out how to transfer some of my stuff to digital, I will share. Until then keep it up with the eye candy, you guys are inspiring, and it is good to know that there are others out there with a love of maps like mine.
Hello McBriggs! Welcome to the Guild!
There is a great tutorial in the sticky section of Tutorials, called Quickstart Guide to Fantasy Mapping: http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=4276
From there, go to Hand Drawn Mapping for the Artistically Challenged: http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...ad.php?t=10655
Once you have completed those two tutorials, you'll be well on your way to making some awesome digital maps!!
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Thanks Chick. Here are some pics of the latest thing i was working on before being humbled into grief by what I saw here. I am proud of this map as it has been the culmination of alot of years of drafting and re drafting. obviously not finished, as a hand drawn mapper i feel that lettering has always been my weak spot. Got the hand drawn mapping tutorial and downloaded GIMP, and am playing already.
Not bad at all! Very nice. You've done a good job with your layout, rivers, mountains, all placed very reasonably. You might want to make your coastlines more ragged (fractal) and narrow your mountain chains a bit, but overall I'd say you are already well on your map to a beautiful map! Have some rep for your first map post
You have some prominent river bifurcations (A, B. I suppose A is really more of a quadrifurcation than a bifurcation).
You also have some prominent linear features intersecting at C. This doesn't make sense. The closest thing that would make sense is a water gap (Mountains rise up under an existing river which erodes a canyon faster than they can rise up. A mountain chain spanning a long estuary as a chain of islands like that at right angles just doesn't make sense. Besides that there are more nebulous ways in which the mountains and coastlines interact in strange ways that feel off, but it's hard to pinpoint any one thing other than C. In large part this is due to them often making sense in isolation and at particular scales, but put together at the sizes they are, it feels off. Sorry I can't be more specific.
The "dangling peninsula" trend that seems to have been popularized by A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones is something to be aware of. (As is it's predecessor of all fantasy maps being on the west coast of a larger landmass) There is a tendency to fit the land to the rectangular map (In the Guild we call this rectangularitis) and attaching a landmass conveniently off one edge (D) doesn't really do much to help it (the edge closest to a pole tends to be worst for this as there is less room for that other landmass). Your map doesn't suffer too much from this but does show a bit of a tendency in that direction (with the north coast attachment to another landmass being the most prominent aspect) so it's something to watch out for in future.
Be careful with Compass Roses and Rhumb Lines (E). They can have a decorative aspect to their use, but they do say specific things about your map. Most importantly, they say that compass bearings on the map are preserved. Not all maps do this, and they have to pay a price in order to do so (all maps distort things, and you have to trade between what kind of distortion and where it is). Bearing preserving maps either have to be very large scale (zoomed way in so that the portion of the globe covered is effectively flat) or they have to be in the Normal Mercator projection which causes significant distortion of the sizes of things (the core trade off of projections is between sizes and angles, preserving sizes means distorting angles and vice versa.)
I'd guess this is meant to be somewhere arround Australia in size (specific details suggest sizes from Great Britain to Eurasia). As a seemingly Geophysical map, bearing preserving would be far, far less important that getting area and distance at least roughly correct (distance is always going to be distorted). I'd expect a map like this to be in a conic projection. Lambert Conformal Conic to favour shape, Albers Equal Area Conic to favour area. Over an Australia sized area, the difference between them is minor unless you are a real geographer/cartographer.
A compass rose, and especially rhumb lines also suggests a map made for marine (or air) navigation. The map otherwise seems to be a geophysical reference map though.
Wow Hai, Thanks for the in depth analysis, you did pinpoint things that i have been struggling with conceptually.
First a note on scale, I am imagining a continent about the same area as mainland Europe and most of Asia (Russia, China, India...) and on a bigger planetary body than the earth itself.
The Compass Rose and rhumb lines were an experiment for effect. And just to see if I could pull it off, but given the terms of scale I can see what you mean, ultimately I would like to move away from the Geophysical projection to more of what might pass for a fantasy map of a fantasy world ("Here there be Dragons" and all that). That being said...
The River bifurcation in B: The smaller southern channel is intended to be a "man" made structure of the grandest scale. A Canal designed not only to provide a shipping route to and from the large inland sea, but to also act as a defense from desert raiders from the west.
the Quadrifurcation in A: Something i've struggled with. Trying to establish borders for an Elven/Fey Sort of federation in that area. Suggestions?
The Island Mountains at C: A result of Pure Cataclysmic Elemental Sorcery done in defense of said Elven/Fey realm. In time they will wear away, but for now, they are on the map.
Bringing us to D: I guess I really don't know, I suppose I originally intended the top of the paper to indicate sort of an Arctic Circle sort of boundry. There is land up there (story too), but I guess I just intended for that to be another map.
Thanks For the Tips. I Am having a hell of a good time here. Struggliing with Gimp, but having a good time.
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