Fantasy maps and mapmaking tutorials by Jonathan Roberts
Here’s the steps I follow when I create a map pack – like the ones I’ve got up for sale on RPGNow.
First I save out a set of jpgs for people to use if they want to print a poster or use in a VTT (Virtual Tabletop) Continue reading “How to Create a Map Pack”
It’s good to hand over final pieces. This one went out the door today – a city map for a client. The combination of detailed line art featured locations and more anonymous shadowed buildings seems to work well.
The featured locations were all drawn at many times their final size. You lose the precise detail when the locations are shrunk down, but the combination of the details provide a sense of the structure.
So things got rather busy. More on that later, but for now a quick sketch this evening to blow off some steam. Who/what would you expect to find in here?
If, for whatever reason, that could be of use to you, feel free. It’s CC-BY-NC-SA licensed.
Nikitas Thlimmenos was asking about how to place icons on a map, so here’s the walkthrough! The map is the Iconic Island (http://www.rpgnow.com/product/110804/Fantastic-Maps—Iconic-Island) as that’s the map Nikitas is using. There’s a bare base map in the pack, and all the .pngs come as separate files that you can add. But this also works if you find the CSUAC bundle of pngs or trawl the Dunjinni forums for the amazing art assets there. You can set dress a dungeon pretty quickly this way.
So, how do you add a .png icon to an existing map? Continue reading “Placing icons on a map in Gimp”
Eric Quigley asked about labeling recently and that prompted me to think a little about how I actually go about labeling a map. Often it’s the last thing to get done, but it’s also the most important. A map without labels is just a pretty picture, it’s not useful. So, it’s worth taking some care getting labels right.
This is a photoshop tutorial, but these techniques are almost identical in Gimp.
Today, a quick one on isometric pen and ink mountain ranges. Continue reading “Quick Mountain Tutorial!”
This article was originally written for people building their own worlds for novel writing, but the process is useful for anyone who wants to create a world and draw a map.
Let’s get one thing out of the way right now.
A map shouldn’t be pretty.
It’s always a little daunting to take on a brand new style of map. When Steve Russell asked for an map inspired by the Orient for Heroes of the Jade Oath I took it on with some trepidation. After a ton of experimenting with textures, brushes and line-styles I came up with a version I was happy with, and this is the result!
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”
Cities and buildings come up a lot in questions. I’ll put together a software specific tutorial on buildings, but today I’m just going to go through my philosophy when illustrating a featured building like a castle or a temple. The process is the same, regardless of software. In this case – ballpoint pen on sketchbook paper.
Continue reading “Highlighting Featured Buildings – Shape, Detail and Contrast”
