Handdrawn anyone??

[Cornell]

I know, I have tons of hand drawn maps, city's, massive cities with around a thousand houses. A lot of people say they don't have the patients to draw them but I love it.

And I checked out the tutorial you mentioned torstan, it didn't really tell me how to draw anything particular. It was awesome though to learn a little more about the right pens and pencils.

I'm gonna post a map that I started last night here in a bit.

[dementia5]

I have a very naive question to ask... most of my maps I've either drawn by hand, or use computer tools from Photoshop to GIMP... can someone recommend a drawing tablet tool for a PC? I'm sure I'm on the right track here, since my fellow CAD designers use something like this. But is there something a bit more affordable for home use? Still qualifies as handr-drawn, right?

[torstan]

Certainly, an A6 or A5 Wacom Bamboo won't set you back too much. $63 is Amazon's current asking price.

[dementia5]

Thanks, torstan.

[PlanetDesigner]

I used to hand draw all of my maps (way back before I discovered computers) - I'm 42, so I can remember one the very first true mass production computers (The "Coleco Adam" - complete with a primitive compuserve subscription that you paid through snail mail and an old cassette tape recorder hard drive! LOL). I even cut my teeth on the old Radio Shack TRS-80 desktop that used wobbly floppys the size of a toast dish, and that had no real operating system to speak of.

I hand draw things that I scan in to incorporate into my graphics. I do a lot of hand drawn art work, but not so many hand drawn maps anymore.
I am - however - extremely skilled at hand drawing maps in the old "Tolkeinish" style, as I learned how to draw fantasy maps by studieing Tolkein's work way back in grade school. If I ever wake up in the dark land of Mordor one morning - I'll be able to find my way NE to The Shire, and I won't need a GPS TOM TOM to do it!

[Badger]

I primarily draw mg maps by hand. my tutorials help thread http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=3013 could possibly help you out... as always I'm open to questions on how to go about things.

[Turgenev]

I used to have a Coleco Adam back in the day. I spent many hours playing games and using it as a glorified typewriter. I've been known to draw my maps by hand now then. Often I will draw specific portions and scan them into the computer and continue with the rest in Photoshop. These days I'm 80% computer and 20% hand drawn. Sometimes it is just easier to draw certain things than trying to recreate them on the computer and other times it is the opposite.

[Badger]

lol missed tor's post on my link... sorry for the repeat ya'll

[Blake]

I almost exclusively hand draw my maps- most of them on paper for campaigns that I'm running, because I generate them on the spot.

Why? Because I don't know if the players are planning to go right or left, travel to this continent or that one, and I don't have the time or motivation to map everything for my campaigns (though I plan out a general idea in my head of what's where).

When I'm doing a serious work, like an overworld map for promotional or concept art material, or a map for hire, I use a tablet and do it digitally. However, I'm trying to move towards a process of reducing my hand drawn details to certain things (like a hand full of trees) that I can clone repeatedly.

So, yes, I suppose they're still hand drawn by me, but I'm moving towards methods of producing work faster so I can get more done, so the elements that are independently hand-drawn are being reduced over time.

My maps, though, are almost exclusively of an archaic "isometric" style iconography placed on an overhead map.

I also, occasionally, hand-sculpt my maps from clay. Sand is also useful if you have access to a beach.