Published map: Darken (Britannia Game Designs)
AndyStaples
Newcomer
Chivalry & Sorcery publishers Britannia Game Designs asked me to draw a map of Darken, from their Marakush gameworld, for their quick-play C&S Essence game.
After some discussion of styles (it had to be black & white and primarily line-art as the game would also be made available as a PDF for home printing), we settled on the B&W Overland style from issue 20 of the Cartographer's Annual.
It's a style I really like, though the forests needed a lot of manual editing to get rid of the tile effect from the drawing tools.
It was quite intersting to work on the map. Britannia have produced several mutually inconsistent maps of the area around Darken for different tournament modules and the like, so trying to reconcile those was a challenge. I also had a scan of a hand-drawn map from author Colin Speirs, an Illustrator file used as a the 'map of record', and a graphic designer watching over my virtual shoulder picking up errors - that made me raise my game!
The map itself is now available as a freebie PDF from DriveThruRPG. Enjoy.
I can't release the CC3 file, I'm afraid. It's a commercial project.
After some discussion of styles (it had to be black & white and primarily line-art as the game would also be made available as a PDF for home printing), we settled on the B&W Overland style from issue 20 of the Cartographer's Annual.
It's a style I really like, though the forests needed a lot of manual editing to get rid of the tile effect from the drawing tools.
It was quite intersting to work on the map. Britannia have produced several mutually inconsistent maps of the area around Darken for different tournament modules and the like, so trying to reconcile those was a challenge. I also had a scan of a hand-drawn map from author Colin Speirs, an Illustrator file used as a the 'map of record', and a graphic designer watching over my virtual shoulder picking up errors - that made me raise my game!
The map itself is now available as a freebie PDF from DriveThruRPG. Enjoy.
I can't release the CC3 file, I'm afraid. It's a commercial project.
Comments
I agree that the style has a little problem with the repeating pattern of the forests, it was really set up for smaller woods. Most automated forests get a bit too regular when they are large, it's always better to break them up a bit and edit them by hand.
I hope this leads to more commissions for you.
I don't object to the tiling too much for a home-use map, but for a display or commissioned map, manual editing is essential. I may try working the forests by hand next time I use this style - draw a guideline for the forest boundaries and manually place symbols. It's worth the effort with a gorgeous, versatile style like this.
Gak, they're most definitely still in business, though they have been quiet for several years. Steve Turner's mentioned on a couple of forums that a fifth edition of C&S is in the works, amd I know they have a couple of other projects in the pipeline too.
And thanks, more commissions would be nice.