Continuing our series of interviews with cartographers, this month we're talking to Maxime Plasse,
known to all here as Max. He's known all over the place for high quality maps.
We asked him 7 questions, as we will in each interview.
The Mirror
1.) Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background...
My name is Maxime PLASSE, known as Max for some people here and there, I'm 40 years old and live in France. I've actually worked for more than 15 years in a very different field, as a social worker, though my interest in art and imagination field is older than that. As far as I remember, I've always liked drawing, reading books and graphic novels and had interest in fictional worlds, mythology and ancient history. I've also been a role-playing gamer since I was 15 years old. In early 2000, after having learned a couple of skills in Photoshop and Indesign, I started to work for a French RPG publisher in my spare time. I was doing some layouts and graphic design for RPG books and that was a very interesting experience. Actually, it still is since I've never stopped this activity. In 2012, I reduced my social worker job to a part-time job, in order to be able to continue working for this company as a professional. Since 2014, I stopped it entirely to start working both as graphic/layout designer and freelance cartographer.
2.)How did you get into mapping?
The RPG company for whom I'm working has published a roleplaying game that was illustrated by Gary Chalk. Gary had also drawn a black and white map of a city and I found it cool. I asked him for permission to make it a colored version that gamers would be able to download for free as a bonus. When Gary saw what I'd done, he said : "well, that's cool, go ahead with it". That was the beginning. I started to make a few maps to practice and experiment. Quickly after that, I found Cartographer's Guild forums and I've posted there my first works. It was December, 2012 if I recall. Motivated by the feedback and the advice I've had in the forums, I've decided to push it further (I can't recommend the Cartographer's Guild forums enough for any mapmakers, especially beginners. This is a friendly place where everyone will surely improve skills in mapmaking with the help of the great community). Then came a time of prolific mapmaking (though sometimes hard and full of wanderings). Since then, I've never stopped drawing maps, making it a professional activity.
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3.)Do you create maps professionally, or for fun? If you've sold your work, how did you get started? Any fun/horror stories to share about commissioned work?
Now, I'm mostly creating maps professionally. In 2013, I started to apply for a couple of the paid commissions requests. Things went pretty well and I started to take more. Since 2014, I'm dedicating around half of my job time to make maps for various clients (authors and publishers, video games companies, RPG companies, historical magazines, private clients etc.). Now my e-mail box is full of requests weekly and unfortunately I can't take all those commissions. Actually I'm pretty lucky with my clients, which are nice and pleasant people to work with most of the time. One of the funniest stories about commissioned work was about a reference sketch sent by one of my clients. It was basically drawn in Excel and that was a big square with some squares and lines supposed to show the "geography". At a first glance, I said to myself "Well, ouch, worst map briefing ever...What can I do with this? Ok let's try to be creative " Fortunately, the client trusted me on this and we managed to get rid of this awful squared world, and build something more pleasant and harmonious. Of course, all clients can't always draw so you sometimes have to deal with some funny or odd sketches to work on. But that's actually a fun part when you have to take it into a creative direction.
I don't really have any horror stories about maps but I have to say that I've lately sweated a bit when a client commissioned me to draw a quite big map where I also had to draw 13 territories coat of arms, 35 creatures insets and around 50 different icons. It was finally a real pleasant work and the map is now very close to be completed. Hopefully I'll be able to showcase it in a couple of weeks.
4.)What kind of computer setup/equipment/software do you have? Any advice or tips for learners?
My work station is a PC with two big monitors, an Intuos 4 graphic tablet, printer and scanner. I'm mostly using adobe CC 2015, my favorite weapon of choice being Photoshop to draw maps or other illustrations. Besides that, a couple of programs like Sketchup or Gprojector are also useful. I started with GIMP and a mouse, working also with scanned stuff that I was hand-drawing with some Micro pigment ink pens. A lot of work can be achieved by learners with this kind of setup, though I would highly recommend a graphic tablet for those who want to improve their drawing work. There's a couple of cheap ones that are pretty efficient. I would also say that one should never under estimate the usefulness of a printer, especially at the start. It helps a lot to check how your work would be legible and efficient at print size.
5.)What are your favourite kind of maps or favourite map makers from history?
I love many kinds of maps. Of course fantasy maps are always a joy for my eyes but I'm also very fond of historical maps from over the centuries. I've always had a soft spot for 16-17th century cartographers like Johan Blaeu, Dominique de Cassini, Guillaume Delisle, Braun and Hogenberg, etc. The Ottoman geographer Piri Reis is also a favorite of mine. Besides that, some more recent fantasy mapmakers like Mike Schley or Jared Blando - to keep the list short- are very inspiring.
6.)What do you consider your best piece of work? How about your favourite, if different?
That's a tough question. If you don't mind, I'll pick a couple of maps that I consider my best pieces of work, mainly because I'm working in different styles. I would say the city of Yphirion and Telduria. The first one because I took care about a lot of details (streets labeling, colors, textures, soft aged look) to create a fictional city but in some historical style close to the ones you could see around late 19th century. The second one because it shows some grand and fantasy landscapes of a fantasy continent without being overdetailed and with this kind of muted color scheme I especially like. The Mirror (Ireland-Erin) and the map of Nehwon, both done for challenges at Cartographer's Guild are still among my favourites. Okay, I'm forced to add a last one because I've made it as a gift for my wife's birthday so it's special and I can't say it's not among my best ones or I would be in trouble at home. This is the map of Vardenia and Urenia. Here I aimed to recreate something close to late 16th century old maps style, with its flaws, its inconsistencies and typographical approximations and specific geographic elements. I also wanted to add a map of a small city in a bird's eye style, widely used in the style of that time.
7.)Where can we find you on the web?
I have a website where I display some samples of my works - maxsmaps.com
You can also find me on Cartographer's Guild, of course, and on DeviantArt, both places where you can find exhaustive samples of my work and on Google's G+