Hi all! Long-time lurker and tutorial reader, first-time poster here. Welcome to the Burning Archipelago.

ArchipelagoMap2k.jpg

The Burning Archipelago is the setting for a homebrew DnD 5e age-of-sail campaign that I'm developing. The various islands of the archipelago were formed by a massive super-volcano, the caldera of which is Lake Renapi, at the centre of Keldrith Island. It's a southern-hemisphere region, at a latitude approximate to New Zealand, so the island of Dunaria has also been shaped by glaciers and sea ice.

I drew the islands in Illustrator using my wacom tablet, with the pen tool set to finest accuracy. This let me scratch out the coast in minute detail. Then I painted a grey-scale height map in Photoshop, using my illustrator file as a layer mask. I took that height map to Cinema 4D (my 3D program of choice) and rendered out a lighting pass. I also applied a gradient map to the height map to lay down a foundation for the colour, then hand-painted the rest of the textures in Photoshop (grass plains, forests, bare mountains, snow-caps, water etc.). Labels and parchment styling were also done in Photoshop.

Thanks for looking. Feedback is welcome!