Fantasy maps and mapmaking tutorials by Jonathan Roberts
I wanted to map a wizard’s tower with a twist – somewhere a mage with a little bit of a steampunk leaning could hide out and experiment. What would such a mage need? A good cover story, and a source of power. Well, mills are the heavy industry of the medieval era – and if you’re milling flour you have power to spare.
So – the hook of the map was a wizard’s tower in a water powered mill. Continue reading “The Arcanist’s Mill – A Wizard’s Tower Map with a Twist”
What would a fantasy world be without castles, turrets, and battlements? Sneaking over the walls in the dark, holding the crenellations from a horde of orcs, or landing on a turret on griffon-back – the castle wall is a staple of fantasy gaming. Here’s the steps I take when drawing a castle wall. Continue reading “How to Draw a Castle Wall”
None of my dungeons are flat. I always have things for people to jump off or fall into. But if you’re laying out a top down view it can be tricky to show elevation on a map.
Continue reading “How to use Hatching to Show Elevation on a Map”
This is a quick tutorial covering the steps I take when laying out and drawing a cave map. Continue reading “How to Draw a Cave”
This was an old sketch with ballpoint pen in the back of a pad of paper. Recently I pulled this into photoshop to do a little tidying up, and ended up adding a touch of colour and shade.
One of the wonderful side effects of living in New York is the chance to run into great people from Tor.com. I’m now part of a semi-regular D&D game, and I draw the party dungeon maps.
Continue reading “D&D Dungeon Maps from Game Night at Tor.com”
There’s a lot of old-school gaming posts going round today, and I thought this one would fit in. This isn’t really a tutorial, more a set of thoughts on different ways to indicate walls on a line map. Continue reading “Dungeon Hatching”
Every week there’s a challenge on Google+ called the #fridayfiveminutemap challenge. This week the theme will be isometric. To give everyone a fighting chance, I’m offering a couple of resources for free.
Here’s a sheet of isometric grid paper. I’d assumed such a thing was easily available, but it seems not. Please feel free to take this and use it for whatever you like. I’ve also attached the .psd file with the grid on a separate layer so that you can get a little fancier with adding a grid to your digital maps.
If you want to dig a little further, I’ve put together a couple of tutorials on illustrating isometric maps:
So a pretty hefty snow-dump just landed on NE and I’m inside looking out the window at a very white NYC. We were out last night and a friend was talking about his upcoming travels, to much warmer climes. So today I thought I’d buck the trend of all the snow pictures, and post a map set in the savannah:
A while ago I was commissioned to illustrate a three story ruined keep, with a dungeon beneath, for Mongoose Publishing. This was in my pre-Photoshop days (2009). It makes me wince a bit to see the messiness of the linework in these, but they served their purpose for the job at hand, and looking at old work is a good way to gauge progress.
Images © Mongoose Publishing, reproduced with permission
