c/fantasy-map-makers

Showerthought: My map for a client's pirate novel got shredded by their cat last Friday.

Spent 40 hours on a huge ink piece, and the cat knocked my coffee over it. Debating if I should redo it traditionally or just scan the salvageable bits and finish in Procreate. Anyone had a project wrecked right before a deadline?

I was reading an old cartography book and found a weird fact about compass roses

It was a library book from 1973, and it said that on some old sea charts, the compass rose points were colored red for the eight main winds. I never knew there was a standard color code for that on fantasy maps. Does anyone actually use that rule in their own work?

TIL those super cheap digital map brushes are often just stolen art

I got really excited about a pack of 'hand drawn' mountain and forest brushes I saw online for like $3. The seller had tons of good reviews, so I bought them for a project last month. When I started using them, something felt off. The line quality was weirdly inconsistent in a way that didn't look hand drawn. I did a reverse image search and found the exact same brush shapes on a big artist's portfolio site from 2019. The $3 seller had just taken the art, turned it into a brush set, and was selling it. I felt awful for using it, even by accident, and had to redo about 8 hours of work on my regional map. It wasn't just the $3, it was the time and the icky feeling. Has anyone else run into this? How do you check if a brush pack is legit before buying?

Hot take: My 4-year-old Wacom tablet finally gave up the ghost last night right as I was finishing the coastlines for a new map.

After trying to fix it for about an hour (mostly just unplugging and replugging things, you know how it is), I had to finish the last bit with my mouse, which felt like drawing with a brick, so has anyone found a good, cheap drawing tablet that actually lasts more than a couple years?

A kid at the library asked me why my map had no farms

I was sketching my world map at a table in the children's section last Tuesday. A boy, maybe 8, pointed at a big empty plain and said, 'Where does the food come from?' I just stared at it. I had castles, mountains, forests, but no farms or fields. It made me realize I only put in the 'cool' stuff. I went home and added little farm plots and pastures near every town. Has anyone else had a simple question totally change how you build a place?

Appreciation post: My old graph paper maps versus my new digital ones

I spent years drawing my fantasy world on graph paper, you know, the kind with the little blue squares. It felt right, like I was some old timey explorer. But last month I got a cheap drawing tablet for my birthday, and I tried making a map in Krita (it's free, which is nice). The difference is huge. With the paper, if I messed up a coastline, I had to erase and hope the paper didn't tear. With the digital layer, I can just nudge a whole mountain range over without a trace. I redrew the entire river system for my main continent in about an hour, something that would have taken me a whole weekend and a lot of white-out on paper. Has anyone else made this switch and found one specific tool, like the layer function, that just made everything click?

Vent: The river thing in fantasy maps is driving me nuts

I keep seeing maps where rivers split as they flow downhill, like around the city of Eldoria in a lot of posted work. In real geography, rivers almost always merge, not split, outside of deltas. It matters because it breaks the world's logic for me. Am I being too picky, or should we try harder to get the basics right?

My entire digital map file corrupted right before a big deadline

I was finishing a commission for a fantasy novel map, about 20 hours of work in, when my computer crashed. When I rebooted and opened the file in my usual program, it was just a garbled mess of pixels. This happened two nights ago. I tried every recovery trick I knew, but the main file was toast. I had to rebuild the coastlines from a week-old sketch I'd luckily emailed to myself. Has anyone else had a digital map disaster and found a reliable way to back up work in progress?

I keep seeing people put a big desert in the middle of every continent map

I was looking at a bunch of shared maps yesterday and over half had a huge, empty desert right in the center of the main landmass... it feels like a lazy default. I think it ignores realistic rain shadows and ocean currents, which would make the geography way more interesting. Does anyone have a good resource for basic climate placement that isn't just 'desert goes in the middle'?

Honestly, I just spent 3 days trying to fix a single river on my map and it drove me nuts

Can we talk about expensive digital brushes for fantasy maps

Everyone says you need those $50 brush packs, but I bought one and it was a total waste. My maps looked the same as with the free default round brush in Krita. Has anyone actually gotten better results from a fancy brush set, or is it just hype?

I finally switched from drawing coastlines freehand to using a specific digital brush in Clip Studio Paint.

For years I sketched every bay and inlet by hand, which took hours and looked messy. Last month I watched a tutorial from a cartographer in Seattle who uses a custom scatter brush for realistic erosion patterns. Do you think relying on digital tools like that takes away from the handmade feel of a fantasy map?

A guy at the library in Bellingham saw my map and asked about the river flow

I was working on a coast for a pirate story map, just sketching in the reading room. This older guy leaned over and pointed at a river I had going straight into a mountain range. He said, 'Rivers are lazy, they take the easiest path. That one would bend south long before it hit those peaks.' It made me look at the whole land differently, like the water was shaping it. Has a small comment like that ever made you redo a big part of a map?

Finally figured out how to make my coastlines look less like a potato

I was struggling for weeks to draw natural looking bays and inlets on my main continent, and then I tried using a piece of torn cardboard to stamp random ink shapes as a guide. It gave me a perfect, jagged outline to trace over in Procreate! What's your favorite weird trick for getting past a creative block on a map?

I wasted a whole weekend on a bad map brush set

I saw a pack of 50 fantasy map brushes for a program called GIMP for only $5, so I grabbed it. The file was huge and took forever to download, and half the brushes were just blurry dots or weird shapes I could never use. I spent maybe 8 hours trying to make them work before giving up and going back to my old ones. Has anyone found a GOOD brush pack for making coastlines that doesn't suck?

Tried a weird trick with coffee stains for old map paper and it actually worked

I was trying to make a map look like it was 100 years old, but my tea staining method just looked fake and blotchy. After messing up three sheets of good paper, I got frustrated and spilled some cold coffee on my desk. I blotted it up with a paper towel and noticed the random, faded rings it left. So I tried it: I brewed a pot of coffee, let it cool, and then dabbed it onto my map paper with a wadded-up paper towel, focusing on the edges and corners. I let it dry completely, then did a second, lighter pass. The result was this perfect, uneven yellowing with soft spots that looked natural, not painted on. It gave the parchment that real aged texture I was missing. Has anyone else found a kitchen item that works better than the usual art supplies for aging effects?

Visited the old map room at the Boston library and saw something that made me rethink my coastlines

They had a real 17th century portolan chart on display, and the way the cartographer drew the waves and shoals was totally different from how we do it now. The depth lines weren't just dots, they were these intricate little curls that actually showed current direction. I've been doing my digital maps with the same basic wavy line for years. It made me realize my fantasy coastlines look flat and fake because I'm not thinking about the water's movement, just the land. Has anyone else looked at real historical maps and had to change a core part of their style?

A player in my D&D group said my coastlines were too smooth

They pointed out that real coasts are full of little inlets and jagged bits, which made my fantasy continent look fake. I started adding a ton of tiny pen strokes to break up the edges and it looks way better now. Anyone have a good brush pack for Wonderdraft that does this kind of detail?

Pro tip: I was sure using a real feather for a quill pen was just for looks, but my map's ink lines got way smoother.

Tried it on a parchment test for my D&D world after seeing it in a tutorial from a cartographer in Edinburgh. Has anyone else found a weird old tool that actually works better for your maps?

Trying to decide between labeling mountains with icons or just text...

I was working on a map for my pirate campaign and got stuck on this for a whole evening. Went with simple text names in the end because the little mountain symbols kept cluttering the coastlines... anyone have a better method for showing rough terrain without it looking messy?

Just realized how much a random comment at a con changed my map style

I was at a small comic con in Portland last year, showing off a big hand drawn map. This older guy stopped, looked at it for a minute, and said, 'Your rivers fork a lot... real ones mostly just come together.' He was right, I had drawn them splitting all over like a tree. I went home and looked at real geography for hours. Now I always check river flow before I ink anything. Has a simple tip from a stranger ever totally fixed a basic mistake in your work?

Heads up about the 'random terrain' button in your map software

I was working on a big map for a game last month, using a popular program. I kept hitting the random terrain button to get ideas for coastlines. It seemed fine at first. But after about five tries, I noticed something. Every single 'random' coast it made had the same basic shape, just flipped or turned. It was using the same few patterns over and over. I thought I was getting unique landmasses, but I was just getting variations of the same three or four designs. This meant my whole continent started to look fake and repetitive. I wasted a good three hours trying to fix it before I caught on. Now I only use that button for a very rough start, then I draw over it by hand to break up the patterns. Has anyone else run into this with their mapping tools?

A convention in Atlanta completely changed how I think about scale on my maps

I was at the Dragon Con mapmaking panel last year, and a pro cartographer showed a map of a whole continent next to a zoomed-in section of a single valley. The valley had more detail than the entire continent. It made me realize I was drawing everything at the same detail level, which made my world feel small and fake. Now I'm torn between making super detailed local maps first or sketching the whole world to get the scale right. How do you guys usually handle the scale and detail problem?

Warning: a kid at the library made me rethink my whole map style

I was working on a map for my book at the local library, just sketching coastlines with a fine liner. This boy, maybe ten, came over and watched for a bit. He pointed at a big, empty area in the middle and said, 'What happens there? It looks lonely.' I told him it was just plains, a place for armies to march across. He frowned and said, 'My grandma's farm has a weird rock that looks like a frog. We have a story about it. Your plains need a frog rock.' It hit me hard. I was so focused on making the map look 'right' with clear forests and mountains that I forgot to put in the weird, small stuff that makes a place feel real. Now I always add one completely pointless, strange landmark in every region, like a crooked tree or a stone with a hole in it. It gives the world a soul. Do you guys have a rule for adding little details that don't matter to the plot?

Vent: I used to think digital map tools would ruin the craft, but after my kid showed me how she built her D&D world in Inkarnate last month, I finally get it.

Seeing her create a whole continent with custom icons and layers in an afternoon, something that would have taken me weeks with just pen and paper, made me admit the old guard can learn new tricks, so what's a digital tool that won you over?