A big thank you to all the amazing map-makers out there sharing their work with the community. Again, it’s been very hard to pick out just a few, and we can’t do justice to them all, but here is just a small selection of the beautiful maps we’ve seen last month.
Will Mason, or Arcwynd as he is known on the forum, was extremely prolific. His series of classic dungeon maps is just one of the Show and Tell threads he’s started. Check out his other stuff as well!
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Dear Cartographer’s, thank you again for sharing all the wonderful work you do on the community forum and in the Facebook group. We can’t do justice to them all, here is just a small selection of the beautiful maps we’ve seen last month.
Mateus has been especially prolific last month, sharing many amazing maps. This one, the Ilha Rasa is just one of this works, created with the Dark Realms style from the Cartographer’s Annual 2016.
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Normally it is a little quieter in our community during the summer months, with us being at GenCon and many people on vacation or enjoying the outdoors. But this year, many amazing and beautiful new maps were posted on the ProFantasy forum. Let’s take a look at this summer’s crop – almost 30 maps in total!
Grimur used the Dungeons of Schley symbol set to draw this beautiful tavern floorplan. There’s a little bit of Photoshop post-processing involved, but nothing that could not be done in CC3+ either.
And his city map of Martell matches this style beautifully.
Finally, he used the latest Annual style by Pär Lindström for this quick local map. The paper folds add just that extra touch of awesome.
I’ve got two months of beautiful user maps to cover, since due to holidays I wasn’t able to collect them for May. So without further ado, let’s get going:
My personal highlight of this month’s collection (and the other maps are very good too I should add) is probably Mappy’s The Manticore’s Tale tavern, drawn in Mike Schley’s dungeon style. it’s just wonderfully executed.
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Time flies and for a moment it seemed like yesterday that I posted the last collection of user maps from the forum. But then I look at all the beautiful new maps and think “No way they managed to do that overnight. It’s hard enough to believe these all appeared within a month.” Let’s take a look!
SteveTravis continues his awesome series of maps for the German rpg “Das Schwarze Auge”. Here are the town of Andergast, the map for an overland journey and a villain hideout.
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It’s time for another look at last month’s maps on the community forum. Let’s see what the CC3 users have come up!
Look at these beautiful floorplans created with Symbol Set 4 (Mike Schley Dungeons) by SlaveOne. Check out the forum thread for even more of them. I’m especially in love with the “Lucky Hobitz Futs” tavern.
Suntzu is using CC3+ to draw maps of Harn, look at his beautiful versions of the whole of Harn and the Melderyn isle.
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It’s time again to admire all the user maps that have popped up in the ProFantasy forum during the last four weeks.
Taking up a recent Annual issue (Pär Lindström’s regional style), Modric created this beauty of the Dwimmerheim region.
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It’s time to take another look at the beautiful user maps posted on the Profantasy forum. The numbers have risen again, and it’s possible I may accidentally skip the occasional map. Check out the Show and Tell category on the forum to see them all!
Henrie61 created this map of the Flow Country in Djekspek’s overland style from the Annual 2012
[Editor’s note: Forum member Mateus Buffone posts about his excellent Panorica map]
Some days ago Simon Rogers asked me if he could use my map as “The Map of The Month”. When I read it, I could not believe it. I started the hobby last year and I am still learning the tricks of the trade, so it’s an honor to have a map that I made posted.
This map is named Continent of Panorica and I did the first version of it in less than an hour for a RPG game that I would begin on the next day. The first thing that I neded was a style that would fit well in a continet map and that have a “fantasy” feel, as what I wanted was a fast and “cliché” map for a fast and “cliché” world. So I choosed the CA51 Jon Roberts Overland Style that is part of the 2011 Annual.
I generated landmasses in Fractal Terrians 3 until I saw one that would fit my needs. Than I exported it to CC3 and fractalized a little more. After that I used the Land Default tool from the style and drew the islands, then used Fractalize on them to achieve a nmore natural feel. The next step was to place the mountains ranges. I was not concerned very much with realistic geology but I did not want to explain all my world with “magic!”, so I placed them first near the coast where I thought others continents would exist if I some day did the whole world. Then I placed the central chains as I needed a desert for my game. For the first version I only needed the central region so I placed some of the major rivers of the continent and dotted some settlements near the desert to form a pseudo-Arabian/tuareg region and called it a day.
But at that point I was in love with the project and wanted to transform it in my fixed fantasy map for the kind of game that I was running (a GURPS Dungeon Fantasy campaign). So I needed other regions and more details. So I begin to really think about the whole image: what cultures lived there, their society and political organizations. I decided to made the banners of the diferent kingdoms and others political organizations. For it I used the CA15 “Heraldry” from Annual 2008 and exported then as FCW entities to my continent map. I used some symbols found on the Map & Catalog Library in the ProFantasy home page. First I had a lot of dificults to implement the shields because messing with sheets is not very easy, but when you learned what to put where they are a big time saver! For the desert, florest, farmland and scrubland terrain to work on this map I had to rescale then for just 50% of their original size (this tip was gave to me by Simon himself).
[To rescale a bitmap fill style:
1. Click on the Fill Styles Indicator, the Bitmap Fills tab, and find the texture on the Fill Style Name pulldown.
2. Reduce the Scale Width and Height (maybe to 50%) and OK.
3. Try again until it looks right.]
Another point of interest was the underwater setlements (Forte do Sino inside Terras Alagadas and the whole southeast region). I spend a big time with then and in the final I only neded of an Transparency effect. And I think that this is one of the most import aspects of CC3. When you find good effects and know how to create and manage sheets for each of your maps you can achieve very good results.
I hope that you like my map and if have any suggestion talk with me on the community.
