Need some Expert advice on improving an old map
Hey everyone, many thanks to anyone who might want to help me out!
To make a long story short: I got Campaign Cartographer years ago because I wanted to make history maps for the world I was building. I've only got the most crude and dirty of artistic skills (which is why I got CC), but after several hours of struggling with the program I found out how to make a crude and dirty map that did what I wanted and look good enough to me. All was good and I spend countless hours drawing borders on my little continent.
Now, after not having touched that map for years, I want to use it again for a project, and I'd really like to leverage CC's more advanced features to edit that old map so it looks better. Specifically, I really want to replace the simple symbol set I used back then with the prettier more detailed symbol set. (You'll understand what I mean once you look at the images below, the detailed awesome-looking symbols just look completely out of place on the hack-job map).
So that's why I'm here. My art skills haven't improved one bit, and I'm hoping there are some expert here who might know some tricks to turn my crude map into something that looks at least good enough that CC's fancy symbols don't look horribly out of place. Below I'm linking an imgur album which includes images of different sheets, in case that helps someone figure out how I hacked together my original map.
I'm only showing a tiny portion of the whole map, which is huuuuge, hence why redrawing it is not an option (with my skills still being as they are, redrawing from scratch would take a hundred hours minimum).
http://imgur.com/a/cPPUG
To make a long story short: I got Campaign Cartographer years ago because I wanted to make history maps for the world I was building. I've only got the most crude and dirty of artistic skills (which is why I got CC), but after several hours of struggling with the program I found out how to make a crude and dirty map that did what I wanted and look good enough to me. All was good and I spend countless hours drawing borders on my little continent.
Now, after not having touched that map for years, I want to use it again for a project, and I'd really like to leverage CC's more advanced features to edit that old map so it looks better. Specifically, I really want to replace the simple symbol set I used back then with the prettier more detailed symbol set. (You'll understand what I mean once you look at the images below, the detailed awesome-looking symbols just look completely out of place on the hack-job map).
So that's why I'm here. My art skills haven't improved one bit, and I'm hoping there are some expert here who might know some tricks to turn my crude map into something that looks at least good enough that CC's fancy symbols don't look horribly out of place. Below I'm linking an imgur album which includes images of different sheets, in case that helps someone figure out how I hacked together my original map.
I'm only showing a tiny portion of the whole map, which is huuuuge, hence why redrawing it is not an option (with my skills still being as they are, redrawing from scratch would take a hundred hours minimum).
http://imgur.com/a/cPPUG
Comments
First, and most important, make a backup copy of your map, just in case something goes wrong.
Open your map, select File>Drawing Properties
- Change Draw Tools Style to Overland CC3
Hide All Sheets except the One you want to work on (Background, Sea, Land, etc) I will use Land for my example.
RIGHT click on the Change Properties button.
Select Change Like Draw Tool
Right Click to bring up the draw tools for the CC3 Overland Style.
Select the Land tool that best resembles what you want your land to look like (probably Land Default or Land no Outline)
Now select the edge of one landmass, RIGHT click, Do It
You will want to do this for every filled entity on your map as well as rivers, roads, lakes etc.
Give a shout if you have any problems or questions.