Friday, August 14, 2009

New Map Style

My favorite map style to draw is derived from how the Harn Map are drawn and it looks like this.



The problem I am facing with my current project is that the style relies on color denote vegetation. With full color printing being to expensive I played around with some alternatives. And came up with the following.




Instead of using color I am use fills for the vegetations. I lighten the vegetation fill and make them slight transparent. Also on this one I played with tinting the water gray and then using a white bleed to give some definition to the coastline. I am pleased the result and feel that I now have a black and white alternative to the color version. And it is easily converted to color by changing the vegetation fill.

In case you are wondering this is a regional map to the Nho area in the southwest corner of the Viridistan Map.

11 comments:

Kristian Serrano said...

Reminds me of the classic Darlene map for Greyhawk.

Robert Conley said...

Appreciate the compliment.

I haven't master the art of making a custom font like she does or can hand draw my symbols. So I got a ways to go.

Al said...

very nice maps!

you should do the valley of the ancients next. not cause my group's currently adventuring there and i'd like to print it out or anything like that...;)

Dan of Earth said...

Cool, how do you get the numbered hexes?

Jeff Rients said...

Gorgeous map, but I can't tell from the key whether the big hexes or little hexes are one league across.

Robert Conley said...

Typed out one column and then wrote a macro that changed the column number. Then copy and page.

If you not going to make maps professionally just buy a copy of Campaign Cartographer or Fractal Mapper and use their utilities.

Robert Conley said...

@Jeff good point. I will have a key for the other stuff but that point would have escaped my notice.

The small hexes are 1 league. I used an expanded scale for my Wilderlands.

Unknown said...

Very impressive. The only weak spot is the font (is that Arial?) Something less modern-looking would be more apropos. But that's minor. Excellent work.

Robert Conley said...

@K Forest - I just can't win ;)

I actually used the same font as in the early modules. Avant Grade/Century Gothic

http://www.geocities.com/rgfdfaq/tsrfonts.html

blob said...

Hot map!

A question...some towns and such are not located in a hex, but straddle a hexside (Blackworth Castle, Rasilor). How do you determine their location? It seems like there could be disputes about whether you're in Rasilor or not.

Robert Conley said...

The Ghinor Color Map the Hexes are for judging movement. Count the hexes between the start point and destination and then fudge by how much it inside the hex (or not in case of straddling).

When I write up this type of map then each section will have a snippet of the overall map to help you locate the region.

In the black and white the hexes are not only distance but a reference to help index the locales in the book.

I am divided on whether to use hex numbers on a map as large scale as the Ghinor Map. Likely if I published this I would add the hex numbers and tweak the locales so they are clearly in a hex. I can get them printed on fairly large poster size so it won't be an issue.