Drawing a Map

[MichaelTumey]

Here's the entire main island of Anshu, labeled.

@Alhoon - note the white rectangle on the bottom of the image. That is 100 miles wide.

I was planning on waiting until all the islands are done, then create a legend with a scale bar at that time.

Link to larger version: Anshu labeled.

Michael

[alhoon]

Wow... that actually makes it a continent I think, not part of an archipelago. Could be wrong though.

[MichaelTumey]

Double post -whoops!

[MichaelTumey]

Loosely speaking, I consider a continent, no smaller than Australia, which is approximately 1200 miles wide. This is a big island, and not as large as Japan. The three large isles of Kaidan is larger than the square mileage of Japan, but still just islands, no continent, as least by my measurement.

Also note the rivers aren't as wide as they appear, this is a hand-drawing afterall. So in some ways this is artistically designed to emulate the real terrain - within the confines of hand-drawn limitations. The island probably has a thousand more smaller rivers and streams that do not appear on this map based on the scale being too small to see at the viewer's elevation.

[MichaelTumey]

Here's a close up view of the central area of the map, around the imperial capital and environs.

[MichaelTumey]

Next update, added the island of Yonshu (where the entire Curse of the Golden Spear trilogy takes place). Next Genshu. I changed the labeling some, I like it better the latter way.

@ Alhoon - I just realized you may have thought I meant the 'height of that bar' on the previous map is 100 miles, I meant from end to end of that bar is 100 miles. (To me width is distance from side to side, height up and down.)

Link to larger version: Anshu-Yonshu Islands.

[Jester of the FoS]

I've been doing a blog series on worldbuilding over on my website and did up a map for that:


Not the most original shape (it wasn't meant to be though) but quite happy with the mountains.

[alhoon]

@ Alhoon - I just realized you may have thought I meant the 'height of that bar' on the previous map is 100 miles, I meant from end to end of that bar is 100 miles. (To me width is distance from side to side, height up and down.)

No, no, I just misread the "100" for "1000".

[MichaelTumey]

No problem, Alhoon.

@ Jester - those are called catepillar mountains, which are what mountains look like from great heights. Me, unless I'm commissioned for it avoid 'world maps' preferring regional and smaller - good job, though.

[Jester of the FoS]

those are called catepillar mountains, which are what mountains look like from great heights. Me, unless I'm commissioned for it avoid 'world maps' preferring regional and smaller - good job, though.

Yeah, mountains are the bane of many map makers.

As I'm doing my blog series on worldbuilding and discuss things often on a continental scale, it's hard to avoid.

[MichaelTumey]

It's not so much a 'bane' for me, rather, I like detail and at satellite heights over terrain only the largest landforms show up at all - mountain ranges, great canyons, coastlines. Technically most rivers wouldn't even be a pixel wide, so a map showing a full mountain range can't show rivers at appropriate scale. I like detail so prefer to create maps that let me show detail, thus regional is about as large as I ever want to go - as in my Kaidan archipelago map above. However, too often when a publisher asks for a map commission it is by in large, a world map they are seeking.... (meh!)

Troll Hammer Games has just commissioned me to create a world map, a small continental map within that world map, a city map guide (without all the terrain, more like a road map), and perhaps as many 37 individual city maps - I'll be starting this commission late next week, more than likely, as I want to finish the above map first and take a few days off of cartography, before I get into the next big project.

[alhoon]

Wow... what the world map will be like? Archipelago? Large continents among mostly sea (like Earth)?

Personally, I recently started making flat worlds for my homebrew campaigns. Not Spherical etc. The range of visibility depends on how clear the atmosphere is and how high you stand.

[MichaelTumey]

Finally done with the map of Kaidan! Since it's too hard to see, each square in the background grid is 100 miles x 100 miles.

When this gets included in the Kaidan GM's Guide, it will be as a whole map, and then divided by province with additional labeling to cover rivers, mountains, ranges, forests, sites of interest and villages of note. So the work isn't completely done, but the tough part is over.

I've probably got 20 hours in this map - both in drawing, then in tracing with vector shapes. Still I'm happy with the result. I've got some labels on the wrong layers, which I need to fix before publication, but here it is otherwise.

Enjoy!

Michael

[MichaelTumey]

I'm starting to work on the specific provincial maps for each main island - for the time being I am working on the provinces of Genshu, the northern island of Kaidan. And for the first province, Atosa, located on the southwest region of Genshu. All the added communities, mountain names, a site of interest and river names came from the gazetteer currently being worked on by Jonathan McAnulty. I'll be doing the same treatment to all the provinces eventually.

Atosa is ruled by Lord Kurashima no Takeshiko, both the last appointed daimyo by the Shogun of Kaidan, and the only one without a noble birthright (in reality he is a necromancer, having achieved a vampiric state from foreign shores.)

Kyobe is the largest city and provincial capital, a port city built in the mouth of the Jakubi river - it is called the Smuggler's City, as many of the surrounding isles in the Kaidan sea serve as pirate (wako) bases of operation, and rely on Kyobe for support.

Mount Hinomoto is currently the most active volcano in the Isles of Kaidan, though several active volcanoes sit on Genshu.

The fortress ruins of Kabutshuchi, sits atop Mount Onikirui, once the stronghold of a mighty oni-king that sought to rule Genshu. Though he was eventually defeated, the castle is now haunted and the mountain beneath honeycombed with dungeons and catacombs from the dark era, when the oni-king ruled here.

[MichaelTumey]

Although I'll post this in it's own thread, eventually, I'm developing a possible Kickstarter to fund the creation of a series of map tutorial guide books, called the 25 Quick & Dirty Map Tutorials Guide, which will feature map design techniques usable in most standard graphics applications (Photoshop, GIMP, Inkscape, Paintshop Pro, Illustrator, Xara Photo & Graphics Designer, CorelDraw and many others.) Although one chapter will focus on using different tools in different applications to achieve the same steps in the given tutorials - either providing brief tuts on how to do that or point to online sources that describe it, the tutorials are quick and dirty in that there are no software screenshots, nor detailed tool explanations, just simple instructions and corresponding map-in-progress views. Each tutorial will be 9 to 12 steps long.

This is intended to be a 250 page, full color, soft cover print book and accompanying PDF file. (I have stretch goal ideas for more books in the series.) I have applied for a publisher account with Lightning Source as my intended printing house, and am currently awaiting for approval before I move forward with the project.

I've created a website focusing on the project, awaiting for the Kickstarter to begin (in a couple weeks.) Please check it out and offer suggestions for improvement.

Quick & Dirty Map Tutorials website link.

This all started about a month ago, when I became active on the Map-Making for Games Google+ community. After posting several maps, I was asked what software I use, followed by requests showing how I use my software to achieve certain effects. So I posted my first Quick & Dirty Map Tutorial which gained lots of attention. After releasing 8 separate tutorials, members of that community suggested I offer them as an Ebook to purchase. Then somebody suggested doing it as a Kickstarter and I've received overwhelming support for such a project. So now I'm looking to do that very soon.

Thoughts? Also please offer any critiques you have for the linked pages above.