30 minute call :)

It's looking great :)

The major labels for things like island names and seas look about right for the size of map you have uploaded here, but may be a little large for all the settlements. It may be worth making them just a little smaller if you can.

It may be that the techniques Ralf uses can be applied to any style. We just don't know yet. Not even I know what the show will contain until it happens ;)

Hi Everyone :)

In tomorrow's live mapping session Ralf will be expanding upon the City Block map pack by Jimmy Medina (aka DM Geezer Jim), recently published as the May issue of this year's Cartographer's Annual.

You can come along and join us live on YouTube on 4 May 2023 (or watch the recording at a later date), here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4B24g61lMw

Or you can watch it here on the forum if you don't like YouTube

Hi McCrakan :)

There is a favoured basic order of doing things which can be modified to suit individual preferences. It might be a good idea to work through the example in the CC3+ manual (written by Remy Monsen) to get a practical feel of everything, but basically its:

• Land
• Mountains
• Rivers
• Terrain textures and Forests
• Structures
• Ocean details

Everything has it's own designated sheet, so even if rivers are normally drawn before the terrain textures are laid down the textures will end up underneath the rivers.

There are drawing tools for placing whole forests available in most styles which fall into 2 categories. There's the super dense forest fills and the more scattered result of using a drawing tool based on a Symbols in Area macro. These are easy to tell apart from the thumbnail image in the drawing tool list. There are also drawing tools available for placing mountain chains, though these are mostly in the Mike Schley Overland style and may even be only available in an annual issue (I can't remember now off the top of my head). Speaking of Annuals they are also a great way to learn since every issue of an annual that is a new mapping style (not all issues are new mapping styles) comes with it's own mapping guide. Here is a wall of links to the individual annual issues. The annuals are sold in bundles of years, so if you want one in particular you need that year's annual.

As for suggestions and solutions for issues you might find along the way, that is what the forum and the Facebook Group are for. There are lots of people (most of the real experts are here on the forum) who enjoy helping to solve these things.