Shaded relief might be the way to go to be more convincing on the higher or more rugged terrain. There's this Cartographer's Annual from 2008 that would help in that regard, if you have it, or if not, try this free PDF tutorial by HadrianVI from 2017, elsewhere on this Forum.

Thanks very much folks!

Closing-in on the final stages of this project now though, so here's a view of Palace 9:

This was done using the SS2 Bitmap A style. I was rather taken with some of the fill options for this, as you might tell! The background here is the snow fill, but the palace itself was drawn using the Water Green 1 fill, as this just seemed such a rich, icy-looking option to give some real colour to this Palace, as a change from some of the previous ones. Not a great many choices from the symbols, unfortunately, as very few come with a varicolor option to better match the icy theme - just the central throne in the end, though at this resolution, you can barely see it, of course.

I'm going to miss drawing these snowflake patterns, I think, but there's the danger that the more I do, the less interesting they may become, since - as my comments regarding the construction of Palace 8 might indicate - I have developed a pattern for drawing these now, which while useful, isn't necessarily such a good thing, as it discourages exploration and innovation. I have enjoyed seeing the styles that were new to me though. There's so much in the full complement of the CC3+ packages I've never properly explored, so I have been trying to take time during this mapping exercise to go through all the fill styles available in each mapping type I've selected, as well as all the symbol catalogues for each. Probably never going to remember where any of these things are when I next need them, but...

Haven't managed to get the rest of the "Palace Quirks" notes typed-up yet; they'll likely follow after the Palace 10 map. And hopefully a little while after that, I might finally get the set submitted for the Atlas!

Having already reserved the orange-highlighted area below in Haddmark, Peredur to place the next small dungeon map in my ongoing mapping project this year, I'd already completed the map for it before the contest was announced.

While it's not been submitted for the Atlas yet (it will be later), this is the map I've prepared, called The Whispering Wastes:

I've explored why it is as it is elsewhere on the Forum, including how I'd had the crazy notion at one point to prepare maps for all 41 features in the labelled hexes. I'd even worked-up details for most, including the ten small settlements. I'll not be doing all that. However, I have decided to try mapping the ten little settlements, although whether I'll finish them all by the end of September is another matter!

The list of settlements, and the theoretical order in which I'm hoping to map them, is as follows:

• Ljungby Village (Hex 005)
• Bruga's Hold (Logging Hamlet, Hex 403)
• Ivan's Keep (Defended Village, Hex 505)
• The Village of Toresk (Hex 805)
• Osalin (Necropolis Village, Hex 1105)
• Arvika (Bridge Hamlet, Hex 1304)
• Rularn (Isolated Hamlet, Hex 1307)
• Brightlawn (Watery Hamlet, Hex 1604)
• Fairbridge (Torne Crossing Village, Hex 1702)
• Skara (Farming & Logging Hamlet, Hex 1611)

Ctrl + F should do it, I think. It's the same command as Tools -> Drawing Aids -> Toggle frames using the drop-down menus, because what you're doing is toggling the frame (thin white line) options to show where the nodes are on a line.

Thinking about the late-stream discussion regarding using the "normal" Mike Schley city symbols to create a top-down map, and then the isometric ones to show a pictorial impression of the place on the same map, with Ralf's comment about using vignettes to highlight important individual places within the settlement similarly, brought to mind the Middle Earth poster map prepared by Pauline Baynes (Tolkien's only approved artist during his lifetime). Digging around online, I've come up with this reasonably high-res version of the original on the Museoteca website, which shows why it came to mind. I used to have a copy of the poster, sadly lost somewhere along the decades since, though it remains strong in my memory!

Thanks Sue! I've been deliberately making the WIP images smaller than the maximum Forum res because they are still very much subject to change along the way, and I didn't want to spam the topic with higher-res shots that were only going to have changed, perhaps quite significantly, by my next posting. On which topic...

Plunging into more of the detailed work within the caves quickly indicated there were several issues in need of resolving or changing. Most revolved around the hex-room caves working as a 3D maze, which needed a mixture of doorways, floor and ceiling openings to work properly. Further complications came about as there were also new, higher, floor levels over parts of what had been simply darkened open areas previously, that were in need of amending. I even managed to find one place where the roof of a lower hex-room needed illustrating, as forming a new piece of "floor"! So, quite a bit of redrawing, adding a new sheet or two, tweaking the effects, and so forth, followed in what needed to be a quite intense spell of mapping.

Rather than post the results of just that, these last notes on the subterranean map condense what were really several sessions spread over a couple of days, as I also added the scaling grid, and then the labels. After reflection, I then changed almost all the labels, as I realised some weren't sufficiently descriptive, and a couple more needed adding! Of course, this is what happens sometimes. Well, it does to me 😁!

Thus the final map:

I opted for a subtly pale, 5-foot square grid for this map, after a few trials. The yellow labelling with a black outer glow is naturally quite deliberate for a bee-folk cavern. The font is Gaeilge 1 which comes with CC3+. I'd have preferred a bee or wasp option for the compass pointer, but settled instead for one of the varicolor options from the Pete Fenlon Revisited style from CA 179, because it was spiky and let me continue the bee-flavoured label colour scheme!

Now to work out where it fits on Nibirum...

If what you're wanting to do is use online images to make your own vehicle trace-drawings for conversion to symbols, it's worth checking the military museum sites (especially if you're hunting for more obscure vehicles) and also scale model websites - including model kit manufacturers. A number of manufacturers now have PDFs of their kit instructions online that you can freely download, and they sometimes have illustrations showing top-down views for the paint and decal schemes for instance, which might be another starting point.

In terms of constructing the symbols, I'd suggest having a set-up where the lines, base colour, camouflage patterning and any markings are each done as a separate Sheet in CC3+ (or more likely "layers" in non-CC3 graphics programs), to make it easier to swap those for different theatres and times. Also, @Lillhans' comment about separate tank turrets is an excellent one. I'd suggest too using Sheet overlays for the top of various AFVs that have different variants using the same lower chassis and skirts, again to make those easier to swap-out without having to keep redrawing each time.

Having discussed the design ideas, methods and overall appearances/layouts for the various Embra "Places" maps in the opening Enclosed Places topic, I'll not reiterate those points here, unless relevant. So moving on, the second set of Places of Interest the Embra "Official Guide" map gives access to, are the Crossing Places:

I thought a simpler criss-cross kind of frame corner decoration might be interesting here, partly inspired by that used for the Official Guide map. While the lines along the map edges are easily drawn in CC3+, there was a more elaborate corner-piece in another of the Dover Clip-Art "Celtic Borders on Layout Grids" hardcopy book designs that I thought would add a little more elegance to this map than my own clumsy efforts were able to achieve. As was established for the first of these "Places" link-maps, the link-spaces themselves are just labelled extracts from the actual maps, with added notes for the benefit of GMs, and further reminders in the accompanying text and PDF files. The seven streets condensed into one map here makes for fewer links than some of the "Places" diagrams, though it did mean making that link point larger, to fit all the names in. As luck had it, I somehow managed to get the dragon in just the right place here to avoid running into problems with it wanting to feature itself in others of the link-squares when I added the Dragon Bridge map extract, as of course it's a complete symbol, considerably enlarged, not something that can be easily dismantled to stop it from doing that otherwise!

The opening map in the group, for the Painted Light Monument, was based on a design from the old Judges Guild "Temples I" book. As noted previously, these maps are smaller in scale than those in any of the other JG books being used as bases for the Embra Places maps, so this too needed a smaller CC3+ layout:

Which of course also reveals the dragon and lion motifs used to further decorate these map frames.

While a deceptively simple map with just a few shapes on it, apart from the omnipresent vegetation (Wooded Places, after all), as the central round tower is almost 90 feet tall (27 metres), there's clearly more to this than meets the eye, which the toggleable (FCW file) interior views should help demonstrate. First the lower level of the Tower Base (the map labels have to be turned-off for clarity when showing the interior):

Then a schematic mid-Pale Tower view:

Followed by one more for the highest interior view, just inside the roof:

I decided to add a few basic notes to each of the interior views as well, to help clarify exactly what was being shown. And yes, the number of steps IS accurate for the height of the tower, as the accompanying PDF and text files for the Atlas will reveal!

Speaking of steps, I had quite a few problems with the Effects on those little steps leading up the gentle angle of the outer part of the solid Sloping Base, as regardless of what I tried, there was - and indeed still is - a degree of interference between the stacked Sheets comprising them. This final version was the better compromise I decided was liveable with, where unless you're paying especial attention, the markings could be simply a bit of wear across one of the pale step stones.

@Autumn Getty - I'd forgotten your comment about castle maps earlier.

I've rather drawn this one "by-hand" as it were, instead of using some of the shortcut options CC3+ might have provided. The Castle Walls add-on from the Cartographer's Annual for 2010 adds some useful commands for drawing the walls particularly, for instance. I wasn't sure how it might handle some of the variable size crenelations I needed here though, but it would have added fancier doorway and archer-window options than the simple straight cuts I've used, certainly.

If you're intending to draw a lot of castles, you might want to think about the Source Maps: Castles pack too. It is an older system which hasn't been updated for CC3+, and probably won't be now as far as I recall. However, you can use it with the usual DD3, etc., fills and symbols instead of the simpler vector options it comes with (it was designed to the old CC2-Pro standard). Beyond the information in the product pages I've linked to, if you also have the Tome of Ultimate Mapping, there are some additionally helpful discussions and tutorials regarding all the Source Maps products there as well, so you can get a better feel for what it can do for you.