Kilgharrah, a 40K (with a fantasy twist) pen&paper map.

[Hinaloth]

Hello everyone!

I return after MANY years of only drooling at the pretty maps I saw pop up on the FB page. Now, as I return to pen and paper and having an actual creative life, I find myself craving the creation of another world.

This time based upon the idea that I do not enjoy the whole GrimDark bit of Warhammer 40K, I decided to make a world that would be based upon this universe, but being a point of light and niceness. Enters poorly inspired planet, Kilgharrah, named after the dragon from the Arthurian legend (most things in this game are named after that saga). It's an ice world technically, though the areas around the equator are mainly tundra to cold-temperate lands. Keeping them penned in with enough to toy with, and the threat of frostbite, I went to world.

I started with rough land/sea contours for the local map I wanted to keep my players in. Then, to give the map some relief, places the mountain ranges. Took me a long time to find a style I could rely on, I went from realistic mapstyle (even dabbled in my mother's old professional cartographer's software), to even more stylised than it came to, to many inbetween. In the end, I felt the use of the usual "tolkienesque" representation would be fine, and went on to use some resources I found on deviantArt to mold the mountainranges.
map1.png

From there, I played with the whole coloring and worked on the forests.
map2.png

After that, I decided to try and give some life to the flatter corners of the map, and went on placing grassy fields and some meadow, which became fields for the nearby city later on. Also, some testing on the waters, and how to mark them. Flat shading didn't turn out right, but covering the whole thing with wavey lines. In the end, I once more drew inspiration from Tolkien's work, noticing that not all his waters was marked uniformly, only the shorelines.
map3.png

Fighting the bleakness of the white background, I attempted for a long time to reproduce colors of natural, real world tundra, but finally remembered to stick to the old, almost-fantasy style, and stuck a paper texture under there. It game much character to the whole thing. I finished putting the water in its place, added some more details I'd missed and went on to place the cities, villages, holds and roads. I am still not happy with those roads. Also, I attempted to add city names (and mountain names, though I got rid of that one quick), trying for the usual "banner" style, but found it highly disgusting. It didn't last.
map4.png

Then, a month passed, and I retook the map up, to update it with the latest from the game. I realized my valleys had no origins, and so went in and used the tutorial found here to make what looks like pretty lazy but good looking rivers. And a marsh-y lake, every map needs a lake. The names got kicked to the curb and the usual compass rose got a setting-specific twist.
map5.png


So, now that it's halfway decent, I decided to release the WIPs here. I hope you people like it and PLEASE, do give me any ideas you may have on how to make it look more decent. Have fun!

[ThomasR]

Hey ! I think I recognize that compass from somewhere Glad to see it put to use and I like the modification you made to it.

About the map, I think it's pretty col and the different features are bulky, your player will have a tough time in these mountains or those forest, that's for sure. I'd suggest that you cut a path into the forests for your rivers and some of your mountains are overlapping a little bit but besides that, you seem on a good way.

... et je réalise que tu es français alors, chapeau

[Hinaloth]

I did steal that compass from deviantArt I think. The mountains and forest will take a rework I think. Probably a hand drawn one, no preset will really do. I'll need to take a lot of time to do it.

Et oui, français, malheureusement..

[ThomasR]

Oui, j'ai aussi posté cette rose des vents sur ma page DA. Je l'avais dessiné pour un challenge de la Guilde. Pour le tracé, copie ce que tu aimes et tu finiras par faire ton propre style. Fais des croquis et poste les pour avoir des critiques, elles sont très souvent ultra constructives.

Et, on est nombreux par ici

[Ilanthar]

Je confirme !
Besides what Thomas said, some of your mountains are blurry (the big ones) compared to the others. I assume it's due to a difference in scaling. What software are you using? Maybe a filter could correct that.
StarRaven's brush set is a great one, I have also began with those trees and mountains .

[Hinaloth]

It's mainly due to using different sets of premade brushes found on DA, using Gimp, and not realizing till the mountainwork was half done that the software kept the brush size from the previous one... which meant that brush sets with different scales got blurier and blurier.