Hi

[swiss]

I like fantasy & impressionist maps. I've been seeing some good ones here so far, and looking forward to seeing some more. Cheers,

[ChickPea]

Welcome properly, swiss

I'm glad you've found our little corner of the web. You're definitely in the right place for fantasy maps. Have a browse through the Cartographers Choice area if you haven't already. There's some amazing work there.

[Mouse]

Hi Swiss!

Welcome on board

I'm very curious to know what you mean by impressionist maps, since its a term that I normally associate more with paintings (I'm a landscape painter as well as a cartographer). Do you perhaps mean painted or hand drawn maps?

[swiss]

Good question. I may be using the term wrong, but what I meant was almost surreal looking maps. Very non-literal. Somewhat cartoony-look. Usually incorporating clouds into the design. I was looking for an example in the albums but nothing jumped out at me

Hey, while I have you, can I ask you a question? What's the difference between these two albums below? Finished thumbs I assume is all the finished products. Is the 1st album that plus all the drafts? Is there overlap between the two?

https://www.cartographersguild.com/albumall.php

https://www.cartographersguild.com/finished_thumbs.php

[Redrobes]

I think Finished thumbs are a gallery of all of the maps in the Finished section of the forum. Usually you place the finished map as the first post in a thread. Work in Progress is known as WIP's and these threads are scattered about the forum where people are building a map and havent finsihed it yet. Normally the WIP threads are very long with comments about suggestions to improve it and general discussion, the finished thread is one post plus lots of people commenting how much they like it.

The albumall gallery is a collection of every members personal albums. In your member profile you have an area of albums where you can create several albums and put your images into it. Sometimes you put your own maps into them, sometimes you may put other peoples maps into them as inspiration. But just be sure to lable the album and work which is not your own as such. Generally you should only put your own work into your albums tho.

So sure there would be some overlap between the finished maps and the albums but its not quite the same. The finished maps are probably the best one list of best maps to look through.

[Mouse]

Thank you, Red

I wasn't really sure how to answer that question. You did a far better job than if it had been left to me

swiss - it sounds to me like you are after a particular style of map - a sort of cartoony concept map? If that is the case then since I can't know your precise tastes it really is a case of looking through the Finished thumbs till you find one you really like and then having a look at that particular cartographer's work.

Enjoy your searching. There are all kinds of maps here, ranging from atlas style to some fairly spectacular wild and beautiful ideas. There are very many of them, of course, but that is what is so great about the Guild. It has literally everything that can be counted as 'mappy' in one big beautiful place.

[swiss]

I should add that that's just one type that I enjoy. I also enjoy the ones on the more realistic side. Here are styles that I really liked while browsing through the albums:

https://www.cartographersguild.com/a...hp?albumid=384
https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...7443#post27443
https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...529#post116529
https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...216#post345216
https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...0753#post90753

...and I'm not even through the A's yet

I wish each map told you the tool they used to make it. I assume most of these are photoshop/GIMP. By the way, is there a reason it seems most people use GIMP out of those two? Is there a downside to Photoshop for mapmaking besides the cost? I already have Photoshop Elements (which I guess is photoshop lite). Not sure if I need GIMP or that would be superfluous.

[Mouse]

That's a pretty selection. I rather like the last one myself

I believe most people say what software they used in the first comment of their finished map thread. I certainly do. If its not said anywhere in the thread, then you might be lucky if you click the person's avatar name and then the tab on their profile that says "About Me" and check out the list under the title "Software used". Sometimes not. It depends how public the person has made the information they wish to share about themselves.

How to do things is another matter altogether. Sometimes people go into quite a lot of detail in their Work In Progress thread (WIP), which we are all supposed to hyperlink to from the finished map thread in the first comment. Some people also give a brief description of the methods in the Finished Map thread first comment itself. I do it sometimes so people don't have to go racing off to read a 500 comment long WIP thread if they haven't got time.

The best way to get information straight from the horses mouth, so to speak, is to make an appreciative comment on the Finished Map thread and maybe ask politely what tutorials they could point you to, or what guidance they can give you to enable you to create a map in a similar style to theirs.

There is a Tutorial forum, where there are an absolutely huge number of tutorials prepared by many different cartographers over the last 11 years that cover all manner of methods in all kinds of software (though mostly GIMP or Photoshop), and if you can't find what you want by searching there for terms you have seen being used in association with the maps you like, there is also a How do I forum, where you can ask a question about how to do something by starting your own thread there with the question as the title and a brief request for help.

Coming onto the question about whether you need GIMP as well as Photoshop, I would say no. If you already have Photoshop and know what you are doing with it, then that is all you will need in terms of a bitmap editor. I use GIMP, but that's because its free and even though it might be an awkward so-and-so at times I can, if I really want to, get it to do most of what PS can do. Its also possible to read and interpret the instructions in a PS tutorial and use them in GIMP, and I should imagine it wouldn't be all that difficult to interpret the instructions of a GIMP tutorial to do them in PS. Sometimes the more experienced tutors will give instructions in both PS and GIMP, or write alternative tutorials for both.

I hope that helps


EDIT: Where I suggest above that you ask people about how things were done and what software was used on the finished map thread, you may not always get a response where the thread is very old. This forum is over 11 years old now, so some of the finished maps will belong to people who may not have been around for the last couple of years. Check the date of the first and last comment on the thread

[swiss]

Those are good tips! Adding that forum to my list.

Are you familiar with the map from Dragon Age? Within this map-type, this is probably my ideal and I'd love to make a map like this. Any idea what program made this?

[Mouse]

Sadly, swiss, I couldn't say, but it does look a lot like a PS map to me. I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure you could get an effect like that in PS, even if the original was done some other way.

Looking at that style, which in many ways is similar to the Lands of Ice and Fire maps done by Jonathan Roberts (though in my opinion not as clear), you might be interested in his Fantastic Maps YouTube site. At the very least it will give you some idea as to how to go about actually drawing things like mountains and coastlines in an easily digestible format