A Tutorial on Fantasy City Building

This is part of an ongoing project on how to realise and build cities from the imagination. Click the image below to download chapter 1.

June competition Map

This was my June entry to the Cartographers' Guild monthly competition. All done in Serif Drawplus:

Summer / Fall Issue of the Cartographers' Guild E-zine released!

I've finally finished the summer / autumn issue of the Cartographers' Guild Ezine. It was a lot of work but I think it was worth it. Click the picture below to see it.

Latest Map

The Continent of Absalon. I'm currently helping a Brazilian musician to create a map based on this one in return for which he will write me a song!

(click for bigger picture)

Incredible Coincidence

Dawn is delivering a lecture in Vienna at an annual Symposium she organises for the market research industry. As part of her powerpoint presentation she wanted a map of the Austro-Hungarian Empire but against modern borders. I produced this for her:



















Last weekend, I was at the community rubbish tip getting rid of a load of packaging material. As I was heaving it onto the tip, I spotted by my foot the corner of a piece of paper with the words 'Austria-Hungary' on it. I pulled it out and there was a pristine Bartholemew map of the AH Empire, circa 1910, pictured below:

Latest Map

Here is my latest map: Click here for a larger version
Ravs

Strange Maps

Two things I enjoy are cartography and useless information.

This site has plenty of both.

A Game of Pikes II

Here is the updated effort. The alpha maping on the edge of the map needs more work but I'm generally quite pleased with the progress.

A Game of Pikes I

The Cartographers' Guild is running a monthly competition (just for fun). The theme is to design a boardgame fit for a king. Here is my effort. It's still something of a work in progress. Personal crits:
1. The wine glass is too 'cloudy'. Not sure why.
2. The candle texture looks awful, it's going to be a tough one to do as Bryce doesn't support sub-surface scattering.
3. The candle flame looks awful (probably better done in post).
4. The parchment looks too 'flat' and needs a bit of body and crumple lines. It also needs to be a bit more ragged around the edges, an alpha map should fix that.
5. The shadows are a little too soft and the light strength too high.
6. It would be good to have more symbols on the map (weather? runes?) and the playing area could probably use a little more colour detail (rivers and mountains).