Share your early maps!

[Gidde]

I love this thread. Thanks for posting it, Kell -- reminds us all how far we've come

Boy howdy, this one was bad. This is the first map I ever made, right before I came to the Guild way back when. I posted it up at the time but for some reason all my oldest maps have vanished from the site.

[UnstableGunEnthusiast]

I think this is a pretty cool initiative. So yeah, feast your eyes on my first map.


IMG_20180208_124956_744.jpg

Interestingly enough, I think I started drawing maps to impress someone, pathetically enough. Safe to say, she wasn't particularly impressed, but I did find something that has become an obsession for me, so.... Profit? XD (there, an embarrassing story to accompany an embarrassingly empty map. Enjoy).

[MapMappingMapped]

That's a lovely idea.
The first one is a *cough* beauty. It's my VERY first map. NOTHING is older than that. Is it a map, you're wondering, or a jumble of text? I always laugh at this river than crosses the mainland. Do you see, in the top left, the river that draws lips? To be fair I can't remember if it IS a river, or a border. This map, you see, isn't made to make sense.
The second one is the first map I did after getting Blando's book. I was still getting used to microns. About two years had passed. I must have been trembling, seeing the shakiness of the lines.

[Kellerica]

My baby ! It's not even finished yet but it is my first map AND my first map here. It lead me to cartography.

Here comes !

Attachment 111336

I'm not even ashamed

It makes this one even more precious that there actually is an original thread of this here on the forums, what with J and company there welcoming you to the Guild too and all that good stuff! Something great was truly started here!

That's a lovely idea.
The first one is a *cough* beauty. It's my VERY first map. NOTHING is older than that. Is it a map, you're wondering, or a jumble of text? I always laugh at this river than crosses the mainland. Do you see, in the top left, the river that draws lips? To be fair I can't remember if it IS a river, or a border. This map, you see, isn't made to make sense.
The second one is the first map I did after getting Blando's book. I was still getting used to microns. About two years had passed. I must have been trembling, seeing the shakiness of the lines.

LOL, okay, apparently the forum placed the attachments in the wrong order, so I opened that first one (really the later one) and was like "get the hell out, NO WAY is this your first map ever" and then looked at the second one and it made way more sense


Thank you, everyone for sharing, this is just fantastic! I think every single one of us can feel good about the progress we've made. Keep 'em coming, folks!

[JsinOwl]

Oh boy, I'll have to root around and see what I kind. Some of these are great though.

[Rochnan]

My first ever map was made for a friend, who had an idea for an epic fantasy story. It also features one of my first custom photoshop brushes as the background texture -one that is still in my set after many years of rotating brushes in and out.
Ah, the good old days of april 2008...funny how it took me a full ten years to start making maps again.

Map of Illusia_ink.jpg

[MistyBeee]

So... It sounds I was fated to be a map maker at the begining, guys. Here is my first map ever, which was so incredibly good that it was immediately published in a popular French journal : "les Croqueurs de Pommes" ("the Apples Crunchers").
Yep.
Well... ok... I was 5 years old, my grandparents were presidents and editors of the (very specialized) journal and it's popular only in farming community. But well, that was maybe the first step
Enjoy the first map showing my grandmother's garden. Sadly the map does not show my grandfather's beehives in the other side of the apple orchard, and which, after many deviations, pushed me way, way later, to choose the name you know

JardinDeMamie_by_MistyBeee.jpg

Edit : Corrected the age, after discussion with the higher authority : my mother ^^

[Gidde]

That is awesome, MistyBeee ... love it

[Tiana]

Interestingly enough, I think I started drawing maps to impress someone, pathetically enough. Safe to say, she wasn't particularly impressed

I would've been impressed. She just basic. It's a pretty nice first map.

[Caenwyr]

Oh wow, this is a cool initiative!

I too have some pretty old maps. And the fun thing is, I've always kept mapping the same region over and over again, so it should be fairly easy to spot the differences in style. This is how my Aran & Ilan map evolved:

Erhaniell%u00252520%2526%2520Ilya.jpg --> new%u00252520Aran%2520wi%2520Ilan3.jpg --> Caenwyr's map.jpg --> AWI_handdrawn_final_scaled.jpg --> AWI_handdrawn_overhaul28.jpg --> Aran_and_Ilan (A5) - FINAL.jpg