Map Making

As a lover of Dungeons and Dragons, and especially as a lover of Mastering the games, I love creating my own worlds for people to play in. Part of that is visual representations of whichever world I'm making.

I love my grand adventures and political intrigue - that always means a big open space to play in. Those things add up to one solution - world maps.

Here's one I've prepared earlier:

A previous campaign needed four distinctly separate worlds, each with their own terrain (and one blown up - see black splodge).

This particular map was created with the Dropping the Rice technique. (On a physical piece of paper, grab handfuls of round rice or a similar grain and drop it over the paper - then trace around. Voila, land masses.)

I found that so frustrating- but there's an easier way to do it using your favourite drawing program!

Step One:

Get a round brush and dab that sucker all over your canvas. Vary the size up a bunch. Heck, do it with your eyes closed. Hold the pen by the top end and poke it at your tablet. --Whatever it takes for you to get some weirdo shapes.

For this one, I already knew I needed one giant land mass and a bunch of islands around, so I already had a vague mental picture to work with.

Once this part is done, if you feel the need you can clean it up a little with your eraser or mark some large water features in the centre.

Step Two:

Outlines!

Vibrate the hell out of that pen to get some nice jagged edges. You want to use a 100% opacity brush in either a grey or black depending on how much you want to see the lines in the final product.

Make sure the lines have their own layer

Step Three:

Filling! Again, 100% opacity.

This layer should be placed underneath the one with the lines, but set that one to about 50% transparent.

Bring your brush all the way up and under your outlines.

Step Four:

Details!

This was painted using PaintTool SAI, its own layer with a clipping mask on the island filling layer.

Make yourself a palette - plenty of sandy browns, forest greens, some greys and browns (individual results may vary).

The grunge brush is your friend.

At this point, the setting the layer with the outlines to "Overlay" is the way to go. Much softer and gentler but still giving you that shadow effect.

Extra: Mountains

Well weren't they a pain and a half... They were painted by first picking a base-brown and painting where the mountains would go. Then, using a more pen-like brush, I drew a squiggly line down the middle for the "peak" line. After that, streaks of a middle brown left and right diagonally for the illusion of height, and dark brown and a pale grey for high- and low-lights.

After your mountains have reached a soft rockish brown, garnish with blending into the landscape.

Step Five:

Water incoming!

To give the water some depth, add lighter areas around the land masses and darker further out to sea... soft brushes, plenty of blending.

Depending on the type of climate you're aiming for, the water will have varying levels of green.

Final:

The joys of blending... In another pass, I would work on the colouring of the water and switch out that diagonal brush strokes for ones that radiate out of the islands.

#2D #Tutorial