Just something I whipped up today...

[Gamerprinter]

Having recently been "educated" on what is a 4e map versus any other kind of map, I've been practicing on the concept this weekend. Also since some members don't play 4e (I don't) they don't quite understand what the difference is, so I created this both for an ongoing discussion I'm having on the RPGNet boards and as an example piece for the Poll thread.

This map was created using Xara Xtreme Pro 4.0 (my app of choice), it is a 100 ppi map measuring 36" x 48", JPG - exported from a vector created map using photo images as textures and a few (the trees and broken statue) map objects mostly made in 3D a few years ago, I use as needed.

I just saw Avatar (the movie) last night at a friends house on his HD TV of a blu-ray disc (awesome flick the clarity of detail in blue-ray is better than reality!) Anyway, the map content is my version of the floating mountains (Halleluyah Mountains in Avatar) as inspiration. I placed the ruin site for something more useful in a D&D 4e campaign - there are no such "ruins" in Avatar.

I started this at 2:00 pm roughly and finished before 5:00 pm - basically a little under 3 hours. As I say, this was intended as an experiment, so its not a commission, but I'm using it for a Pathfinder game I'm working on with my players. It was fun to do, and now I want to expand the theme and add other maps for a not-so-much Avatar, but wilderness setting with exotic locations. While I actually do prefer to create hand-drawn stuff, creating a strictly digital map as this one is easy for me to do, and much faster than hand-drawn work.

Just for reference Xara Xtreme is a vector app with powerful bevel/shadow/feather features that allows making maps extremely fast, that's why I use it for my cartography work. The textures are photo images, mostly from CGTextures.com site and some of my own photos over the years. I don't paint, so I don't use paint apps (PS, GIMP) much, except for image alteration/enhancement as I need it. I didn't need it for this map; this is all Xara work.

Since I've been busy on too many projects as of late, I haven't posted many maps recently, so I thought I'd put this in the Finished Maps forum...

Enjoy! CC License for use, since this is not a commission. Use it if you want!

GP