Full time jobs for cartographers?

[DanielHasenbos]

Odd, questions maybe, or maybe not. Do you guys know of any full time jobs for people like us? Fantasy Cartographers and Illustrators and such. I know that some people land jobs at the bigger companies, and I'm not sure if those are still freelance jobs or, how do you call it in english, permanent jobs. I'm pretty sure that there's no job where you draw maps 40 hours a week, and get paid a regular salary each month (if there were we'd all stop working our day jobs!). I assume if there are jobs, it would mostly include other elements as well. Closest thing that I can think of to something like that is Art Director and similar jobs, where you're basically responsible for anything related to the art department. That mostly comes down to managing the freelance cartographers, rather than working as one, at least how I understand it.

I also know that most people that I have spoken to, tend to keep the details of how they run their business to themselves, so I don't know if this is even something people would want to discuss openly.

But yeah, my question is, are there any full time jobs at publishers, producers and studios, for fantasy cartographers.

Any advice or thought are greatly appreciated!

[Mouse]

Oh what a lovely dream that would be

I've never seen anything other than OS jobs, and that's not fantasy cartography. Its also very sexist. Or at least, when I was fresh out of college with an 'HND in Land Use' under my belt. It was most definitely a male dominated occupation. (We're talking about the way things were back in the sexist 80s, when women were never taken at all seriously if they wanted to do something other with their lives than become a house-bound baby machine). Only the boys in my college group ever got to be 'proper' cartographers - even though I had 5 distinctions and the best of the rest of them had only 3. I never even got an interview, thanks to the fact that I was female.

I ended up doing all the photocopying and making all the coffee for a nameless Planning and Estates team at a certain County Hall in the south east of the country. Bored to hell, I was. I certainly never drew any maps the entire year I was there, even though my official title was 'Mapping Assistant'.

'Coffee Maid, and Chief Gofer', more like!

[Tonnichiwa]

Wow! I'm sorry to hear that Sue. That sucks!

So the only answer I can give to the OP is check Artstation. They might have work where you draw maps for video games and such. Or who knows what else you can find there. The only reason I haven't looked intensely enough is because I am using CC3+ and it is not known in the gaming world as being a program that most companies want to pay for considering they cannot have exclusive rights to all of the artwork produced in it.

[Mouse]

Thanks for the suggestion, Tony.

I spent 4 years of my life discovering that women were not allowed to do interesting and creative things with their lives back in the 80s.

I did something else instead.

Their loss, not mine

I'm not sure I understand what you mean about CC3 not being accepted by the industry. Its not as if it costs the Earth like a lot of the other pro software!

The maps you make with it certainly belong only to you, not Profantasy. They make that quite clear.

[Mouse]

Oh yes! Want a laugh?

I tried again when I saw a job with the army - advertised at a job fair I went to.

They weren't at all sexist. No.

They were ageist instead.

I had just turned 40, 6 months earlier, and that was the bar that meant I couldn't even apply for the post!

[SteffenBrand]

I actually have exactly that job. I work full time 40h with regular salary for Europes largest RPG-P&P-Company, managing Cartographers who are freelancers and doing as much cartography as I can myself. But yeah, you are not wrong - the job was never offered, but I suggested it to them after my GF said I should. That was about 2 years ago. =)

What I want to say is this: Suggest the job to the company. Take the initiative, just apply. It can happen, but it is rare.

[Tonnichiwa]

What I mean is this. After making my Mok Torkan map I was approached by many people wanting me to make a map like Mok Torkan for them as well. The problem became one where they wanted exclusive rights to the symbols I used to make it. I can't give them those rights because Profantasy has the exclusive right to those symbols. I told them that they license those symbols to me so I can make them an image that uses them and they can have all the rights to the image I create for them, but not the rights to the symbols themselves. I tried to explain to them that it is like Microsoft Word. Authors can create books using Microsoft Word with no problems, but they do not have the right to sell the rights to the font used to create those books. That is basically what these guys were asking for. So since they can't have that, they aren't willing to do business with anyone that uses CC3+.

That is not to say that every game company wants those rights, some are perfectly content with just the image. But it does create a problem when they do.

(Recently, my problem isn't that though, it is price. Some game companies have approached me recently and wanted me to make them a city like Mok Torkan but were only willing to pay around $50.00 USD. Yeah right....)

[Mouse]

@ Tony - Sounds to me like they were after having their cake and eating it too.

That's like deciding that you have a right to take all the artist's paint tubes and paint brushes just by buying a single landscape painting.

Its presumptive and disrespectful.

[Tonnichiwa]

Yeah, I thought so too. But that's what they did anyway.

[Greg]

Yeah, it's something I've often wondered myself Dan. I certainly think it's possible to make a full time living from it, but I think even at the very top, it's going to be pretty much freelance work, but I don't know for sure. There's some people on here like GamePrinter who run their own RPG publishing units, and would make the maps to accompany that, but I'm pretty sure that involves writing the lot of modules too. Plus, I know he still takes freelance pieces, such as those Call of Duty maps he published a while back.

It certainly would be interesting to hear from some of the people on the guild who have found some success in that regard. Francesca Baerald seems to be doing fairly well, but equally she branches out into plenty of illustration pieces as well. Max I haven't seen too much on here recently, but it seemed he was solely a cartographer at some point.

I think Steffen's advice is useful and probably the best you're going to get.

*Also, Sue, sorry to hear of some of those things. It's such a shame how ignorant the world can be sometimes.