Of all the submissions, I felt that the Cloister Island map functioned best as both a visual information system and an inspiring illustration of its setting. So without further delay, the winner is… entry #17 Cloister Island, followed closely by the runner up, entry #15 Smugglers’ Island. Given the straightforward parameters set down for the competition, “create a map of an island, less than three miles wide” scoring the entries by these criteria made for a process that, though difficult, was fairly straightforward and analytical. These measures include aesthetic appeal/creativity, visual readability, and usefulness of the information provided. My methodology for examining the submissions came directly from my own cartographic practice and relied on the three criteria by which I judge my own work. Assessing each entry in a logical manner and narrowing the field to two pieces would require making tough choices on the narrowest of margins. Then, upon seeing the work, I realized how difficult the task would be. When approached by Simon to decide the results of this competition I jumped at the chance. He took his job very seriously and came back to us with the following results:įirst, I would like to thank Profantasy for inviting me to serve as judge for this mapping challenge. 1 CommentĪs we wanted to be as impartial as possible, we’ve asked fantasy cartographer Mike Schley to be the judge for our January competition. Since you can line up 30 of the little cloister images end to end and have them stretch from one side of the island to the other, the island winds up being about 3 miles across. The cloister itself is about 300 feet on one axis, making the hypotenuse around 500 feet. Then I did save-for-web and picked settings that looked good but kept the resulting file under 2 MB. I had created a “parchment background” from some rendered clouds and a bunch of filters, so I laid out the various pieces on that background and added the text elements. The last step was to bring it all into Adobe Photoshop.
/pic649773.jpg "profantasy campaign cartographer")
I took a screen shot of that and traced over it in ProCreate. The “3D” isometric extrusion of the cloister is actually just faux-3D, a technique I use in Illustrator where I take the overhead plan and rotate, squash, duplicate and move by a certain amount, and then blend. It’s far larger, sharper, and more detailed in the original file, with many upper floors and basement dungeon levels. The cloister overhead plan was laid out in Adobe Illustrator. The shape of the island and mountains isn’t based on anything other than doodling with the idea of a vaguely volcanic tropical island in mind. There are a few “pattern brushes” in that app which help with things like the the jungle trees and the ocean waves, but everything else was the result of pushing pixels manually. I’m passionate about making beautiful illustrations, and I’m excited to be learning new techniques every day.Īs for the hands-on process itself, virtually all of this map was hand-drawn in ProCreate on an iPad 3 using an Adonit Touch stylus. I had an aesthetic that I’d been developing for maps for my novels, inspired by some of the top fantasy cartographers online. Some secrets and clues that would only be available to those who looked closely, and a narrative that would marry the image to the text. As a novelist and dungeon master, I knew I could create some storytelling elements that would hook into the drawing. That’s why there’s no border around it, and no compass rose… But what I did manage to produce followed my vision. I worked feverishly, right up to the deadline, and actually ran out of time to put absolutely everything I wanted into the map. I took a look at the submissions that had been sent in thus far, decided I had a shot at winning, and threw myself into it. The contest had been open for months, but was closing in just a few days. Make an island, they said, about three miles across. Now I had a chance to win it in a competition.
Profantasy campaign cartographer software#
I’d been interested in their software before, but hadn’t had a chance to use it. I wanted an assigned theme and a real deadline-something that would challenge my skills and help me generate another piece of work I could be proud of. Here’s what he has to say.Ī few weeks ago I was searching online for fantasy map-making contests.
We’ve asked Christian, the winner of our map-making competition, to share a few words on his map and the competition and he was so kind to oblige.
0 kommentar(er)
