What got you into cartography?
MatthewBertram
5 images Traveler
Just curious about how all of you got into the art of cartography, what lead you to CC3+, and what your goals are for using the program?
For me, I saw the bundle over on Humble Bundle and immediately got interested. I was always fascinated and mystified by cartography, but now I feel inspired to indulge! Can't wait to see what lies next for me as an amateur cartographer.
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What got me into this? Architectural Drafting, and Traveller, in that order.
I first started with Dungeons & Dragons in December of 1979. !!! Back then, our maps were hand-drawn on graph paper, or store-bought modules that were only slightly more sophisticated than graph paper. Played off and on with different groups for decades.
In 2017, having not played for nearly a decade, I started to create my campaign world. I searched for mapping software and the Internet's consensus was that Campaign Cartographer was both the most powerful and the hardest to learn. Sounds like a challenge! I used my tax refund to buy everything except the annuals (which I didn't understand)...and failed.
I've always been a visual learner. I retain more from reading a book than from listening to the audio version of it. I thought I could teach myself from the PDF manuals. I got some basic concepts, but I didn't really get them. I fiddled around with the software but everything looked awful. (They might have looked slightly less awful if I knew how to turn on sheet effects.)
Then COVID hit in 2020, and with a lot of not-leaving-the-house-time, I revisited my world-building, but not map building. It wasn't until mid-2023 (six years after buying the software!) that I finally decided to start watching some of the tutorials. The obvious thing to everyone except me: videos aren't just audio, they are also visual. Things started to click. And then I became addicted to the videos. To see a blank canvass come to life and turn into a work of art! And then to start mapping: even more addicting! I've mentioned this before, but it is really stimulates left brain/right brain simultaneously. There's the creative part about creating a work of art. But there's also the analytical/problem-solving part about how to do that with textures and symbols and optical illusion sheet effects. I posted my first map here (not the first map I created, but the first I posted) in January 2024, and it's been full speed ever since.
Wanting to make a map for the novel I never finished writing (and probably never will).
I've just started writing modules for Call of Cthulhu. I wanted to be able to make 1880's floor plans, caves, dungeons etc, myself.
Then Humble Bundle did the rest. I've picked everything and I'm currently reading the manuals. I hope I can use cc3 to it's full extent.
When I was 12, I was obsessed with Lord of the Rings, and wanted to create my own world. Then I went on a school expedition to Norfolk Island, and 'fell in love' with the map of Phillip Island, 5 km south of Norfolk island, and denuded of all vegetation by rabbits imported there by the prison officers for their 'hunting entertainment'. They have actually got rid of the rabbits and the island is being revegetated, but when I visited it in 1964, it was like a moonscape!
Anyway, this is the Google map of Phillip Island, and the first map I ever did (by hand) of the fantasy land of Al'Ayn - again for a book I will never write. And also, the third map is the newer version made when I got CC2, then the fourth when I got CC3+.
Making maps for the war games I designed. Alas, too expensive to try to sell them anymore.
When I started playing AD&D (2nd Ed) back in the early 90's I was elected the group's DM, so it became my responsibility to provide the adventures, and by extension, the maps for them. And now 30+ years later, my group still plays AD&D (2nd Ed), I am still the DM, and I still make the adventures and maps.
Me too, Loopysue!
Like many others I got into map making when I started playing D&D. For me it was during the transition from 2E AD&D to 3E D&D in the late 90s/early 00s. I remember getting my hands on the CC2 demo and playing around with it. Back then my maps were hand drawn but as I got older I learned how to use programs such as Photoshop and Gimp. It wasn't until fairly recently, during the pandemic, that I started to play online and needed maps for Roll20 and rediscovered Campaign Cartographer.
For me, like I guess many others, it was the maps in the Lord of the Rings. I got the third book first (the others were delayed) and I vividly remember puring over the map trying to find the locations mentioned in the "what happened so far" section, but couldn't. Of course, because the book in the Return of the King only shows Rohan, Gondor and Mordor.
Because I loved the much higher detail of that map, I went ahead and expanded it myself to cover all the area of the big map. I think I ended up with something like 5x5 sheets of paper. Those hung over my bed for the longest time.
Maps have always fascinated me — long before RPGs crossed my path.
I remember well when the world was not yet made of screens. We lived surrounded by paper, pencils and imagination, and even without knowing exactly why, I was already attracted to those mysterious lines that indicated paths, places and possibilities.
There was, for example, a map of acupuncture points that my aunt kept very carefully. It fascinated me. It was this first contact that led me to study acupuncture for more than twenty years. It was as if each point on that drawn body was a crossroads between science and mystery. I also fondly remember geography classes. With silent maps we had to fill in roads, railways, capitals, rivers... That, far from being just a school task, was almost a sacred activity for me. I lost myself in that process with a joy that few would understand.
And then came RPGs. My first adventure was as a master — due to a lack of volunteers, it's true, but perhaps destiny was already giving me a push. I didn't follow the game's official script. I created my own story inspired by the short stories of the masters Roy Thomas and John Buscema and drew, as best I could, a small, crude map. It was 1987. And from there, it was all uphill.
Also, there was a time when maps were not only used to dream of distant worlds, but to emerge unharmed from a real world. In those days a well-placed line could be the difference between returning... or not.
Years later, around 2010 or 2011, the internet finally became accessible in the small town where I was living at the time. That's when I thought, half-laughing to myself: "It's already 2011... where are the flying cars?" If they hadn't arrived, at least, I imagined, maybe there was a computer program to make it easier to create maps — since those made by hand required time that I no longer had. It was in this search that I found Campaign Cartographer. I installed it, started fiddling around, and soon after my life turned upside down. I moved to Argentina, in an unexpected turn of events, and only really resumed this passion in 2021.
I've no real recollection of what started my interest in maps, mostly because I don't remember a time when I wasn't aware of them. The earliest maps I recall, from when I was very young, were maps of the night sky and maps of the region around where I was born, as my parents had these, and I was encouraged to look over them from then onwards. The particular blue of the 1957 Philips' Star Chart is what I still associate with maps of the night sky. The fact books often had maps in, notably, if not exclusively, fantasy fiction ones, kept that momentum going until I discovered D&D in 1976, along with interests and studies in physical geography and geology, by when drawing my own maps by hand was just something I did. Never quite got round to stopping.
When I started having increasing dexterity issues from 2010, I looked around for computer mapping options to help accommodate those, and discovered CC3, widely-held as the best there was, and still the most powerful fantasy mapping tool from what I've seen. I've been using it since 2013. Most of the maps I draw with it now are items for the Community Atlas, something I'd hope to continue with, although I always seem to have ideas and plans for more that time rarely allows to bring to fruition...
For me, like I guess many others, it was the maps in the Lord of the Rings.
I forgot about my early mapping influences from fantasy/sci fi literature, prior to discovering D&D. The Lord of the Rings was huge, naturally (I even had Karen Wynn Fonstad's Atlas of Middle Earth). And then the maps from Pern, and The Land from Stephen Donaldson's Thomas Covenant novels.
But I forgot that the earliest for me was the maps from The Wizard of Oz books. I was obsessed with those books from around the ages of 7 to 10. I would draw the map from memory over and over again. I started to do a version in CC3 but got distracted by other projects. (The map is now in public domain so no copyright infringement!)
Around the same time, while our teacher was reading stories to us, I would doodle side-view maps of underground mansions inspired by an illustration from the children's book Babar and Father Christmas, which you can see on the bottom of this page:
https://imaginaryelevators.blog/2021/12/21/babar-je-taime/
@Royal Scribe wrote:
I even had Karen Wynn Fonstad's Atlas of Middle Earth
Now, there's a familiar name. I've never seen her Middle Earth atlas, but I do have her Forgotten Realms atlas on my bookshelf, full of lovely hand-drawn maps.
Contrary to many of you, I had an upbringing where fantasy was simply not on the menu. I don't think my family had anything against it, it was simply not something they had heard about either. It was never a topic among the kids at school either. Tolkien was something I only learned of as an adult, after I learned about role-playing games which happened in my mid-teens. First as computer games (Eye of the Beholder anyone?), then the real deal.
I guess the closest I got to fantasy was the Narnia books, which I guess by one definition clearly fits the genre, but on the other hand doesn't really match up with the common fantasy archetypes, and I don't think there was any maps in any of the books I had.
Tolkien also arrived later in my life, when I was young, around 15 years old... But then my heart already had an owner, Robert E Howard and Conan.
I have Karen's atlases of both Middle Earth (I bought them as an adult) and, since I was young, the Forgotten Realms, where her drawings inspired me more than her writings. I remember using her drawings to inspire me to write my own stories in my Forgotten Realms - parallel reality.
I didn't discover Tolkien until the early seventies, but once I did, I was really hooked. The maps were wonderful in both The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings, and I tried to make my own in a similar vein with pencils on plain lined notebook paper. Of course, I didn't want to copy Tolkien himself, so I had to make up my own place names for cities and countries. After that, though, I came across many other maps, such as the one by Robert E. Howard in his Conan stories, the Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey, the maps in the Shannara series by Terry Brooks, and many other fascinating gems in a variety of fantasy and historical novels. Maps are a great way to visualize the relationships between various places within the fictional setting.
The love for a really good map has continued with me throughout my life. When I discovered CC3 some years ago I put that love to work for me, creating a series of maps for my own fantasy novel, which I'm happy to say to both @Loopysue and @Maidhc O Casain I actually finished and published. It was a work of love that only took me about thirty-five years to complete. So, by way of encouragement to the two of you, hang in there. It may still happen.
As a child, my family went to Lake Erie for a short trip. At one of the shops, I saw on the wall a reproduction of an old depth map of Presque Isle Bay from the 18th century. I was fascinated. It was much different than the maps in my school books. It told a story with lines and numbers about the changes over a century of nature and civilization. Most importantly, I could see the actual bay in front of me, so it felt real. I wanted to buy a copy, but at that time we barely had money for a trip let alone a map.
Fast forward some decades, and I returned to that shop and bought a copy. My study and technical skills started when I bought the map, but my fascination started on that trip as a child.