A Cartographer's Journey - How did you start drawing maps?

[mapsarebadmkay]

Hello Cartographers!
I am a new member here, but i've been a Dungeon Master for a long time, and a cartographer since i was a child.

I wanted to share my history, and hopefully hear some of yours. I've read passionately all the intervies and i found it very interesting, but i would like to hear something from you all!
Why?

Well, i was reading Immanuel Kant when enrolled in Philosophy and i never forgot this quote, which unfortunately i was not able to find again, but it sounded like this:

Every serious interest for knowledge starts with the passion for geography.

And so, this made me think about my infancy. When i was 8/10 years old i spent a lot of my time (no smartphones at the time) drawing maps. I spent my time on the atlas, and i had this transparent paper with which i would copy all the borders. Then i would try to reproduce the same maps without looking at it, trying to remember the shapes.
I really cannot say why i had this fetish for borders and irregular shapes of the rivers and the mountains but anyway,
that's why i always loved to draw maps, as a dungeon master.

And what about you? What did drive you here?

Have a nice day

[Conorius]

Heyo Mapsarebadmkay. I'm new too, so there's that.

As a kid, my favorite thing was to draw. If I could get my hands on paper and a pencil, I would scribble and jot down all kinds of things. I drew dragons, aliens, castles, knights in shining armour; anything that I thought of. Every inch of each page would be filled with something, and I'd burn through 10 pages daily. Vastl ideas never ceased and stories grew from these pictures.

I think I was about 12, when I asked for an art set for Christmas. It came with 100's of supplies, but there's one thing that stuck with me: tracing paper. AT the time, I was in 7th grade, and had this massive history workbook. It had an atlas, with all kinds of maps, from Europe to South America, and I traced the borders from the book. Sometimes I'd redraw a whole continent, and sometimes I'd combine real boundaries together to create new places. I've since ran out of tracing paper, but the interest in maps has stayed with me.

[mapsarebadmkay]

I've since ran out of tracing paper, but the interest in maps has stayed with me.

Tracing paper! That's the names! I always had lots of that!
Anybody else who have run trough this tracing paper fever period?

[mapsarebadmkay]

Sorry for the double post.
Just wanted to ask the Moderators if i choose the wrong section for this. I guess maybe the Regional/World mapping subforum would be more appropriate?

Also, was this question so boring? I tought the community here would show some enthusiasm.

[Cartography Dragon]

I'm a relatively new member here as well, but a long time fan of fantasy. I've been drawing maps of made up fantasy worlds for about six years or so, since I was around eight. Being able to visualize the lands I've imagined has always been important to me, but two things really inspired me to make maps that are not only useable but beautiful (kind of, anyway). The first was the maps in Tolkien's classic, 'The Lord of the Rings'. The second, and more recent, was Jared Blando's book, 'Cartography for Gamers and Fans'. The book has helped make my goal of creating maps of a high quality seem achievable, and inspired me by showing me what a high quality map looks like. It was through searching for his site on Google that I found this amazing place as well. Seeing all of these works of art has certainly given me something to strive for.

[Gamerprinter]

Well I'm a long time member here (since 2007), but like many I've been an artist my entire life, drawing even before I could write. Also my family went on many driving vacations, and driving between family relocations (I lived and moved between Alaska, Utah and Illinois before I was 7 years old.) On all those road trips I was always the navigator keeping track on road atlases. I can even remember drawing maps of my own at about 7 years old. Although my first game of D&D was in 1977, I didn't play regularly until the summer of 1980, when I was a junior in high school, but from that time forward I did all the mapping in RPG games that I played - creating nations, castles, cities and dungeons.

Professionally, I have been a graphic designer since college, having eventually run a family owned graphic design and digitally printing studio for 21 years (closing the shop in October of last year). In 2007, I opened Gamer Printshop (an extension of my existing graphics shop as an additional income stream) offering large format map printing services to games and game publishers. In order to promote that idea, I joined the Cartographers' Guild. After winning my first Cartographers' Guild Map Challenge, I began to be contacted by game publishers with commission offers, the first one being a series of maps for Dog House Rules. I have participated in couple dozen map challenges since, and other map contests, at the same time as doing ongoing map commissions for dozens of publishers, including Paizo Publishing (the creators of the Pathfinder RPG) creating the original hand-drawn map of the City of Kasai, for The Empty Throne module of the Jade Regent Adventure Path.

In 2009, I began turning a homebrew game setting into something I wanted to publish. In 2010 the first supplements, and 3 modules were published for my Kaidan setting of Japanese Horror (PFRPG) as an imprint under Rite Publishing. By the end of this year, I will be releasing the Gamemaster's Guide to Kaidan, which was funded by a Kickstarter. Also this year, I should be releasing several of my own RPG projects which I will be publishing on my own.

In 2014 I created all the multiplayer maps for the Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Strategy Guide for Brady Games Publishing, which was my best paid commission so far. I'm currently doing commission maps for Stormbunny Studios, Rhune setting of Viking Stormpunk (I'm finishing that map today in fact). I also have 12 maps to do for two adventure modules for Legendary Games, which I will begin next week. And I have 2 personal commissions to do for individual gamers this week. Between commissions I create maps and sell them as map products via my DrivethruRPG publisher page (I have over 30 map products being sold right now.) Also several of my star ship deck plans, in addition to being available as map products on DTRPG, have been released through another publisher as licensed stock art for publications.

I even have one current project where one of the writer/designers I worked with creating a haunts guide for my Kaidan setting, has approached me about writing an ongoing series of one-shot adventure horror modules for Pathfinder RPG, built around maps I've already created and published on my own, as well as including some new maps for that project.

[waldronate]

Why did I start doing mapping? Megalomaniacal tendencies.
Why don't I do a lot of maps? Poor artistic ability combined general laziness.
How did I end up here? Someone kept pestering me via e-mail to support my children and it was easier to do it here than via e-mail.

[Mouse]

I write, and a story needs a map as much as a map needs a story. A map without a story is incomplete, even if that story is just the history of how the map was made and why.

The two are completely inseparable.

[Jaxilon]

What was the question again? After reading all the comments above which I found interesting and fun I had to double check.

Let's see, I used to paint stuff when I was a kid but never thought much about it. In the 7th grade I played my first DnD game and was hooked on RPGs. After about a year I moved to other settings like Boot Hill, Top Secret, Gamma World, Star Frontiers and finally GURPS (I've never looked back). It was during all these games that I started drawing out maps because I enjoyed running the games more than I did being a player. I wasn't really doing a lot with cartography though, just rough sketches. I've always said I was an artist first, Cartographer second.

While in High School I took an art class and was doing little drawings until I found out I had to turn in a 6 page poster-board sized portfolio at the end of the semester for my final grade! I realized I would have to draw a billion images at my current size and decided I had to go big. I got an A in the class but being forced to draw and paint like that showed a talent I never knew I had. Around then I had to decide on a career path and my parents took my portfolio to a professional artist who said I was at the level he was at my age and I definitely could make it if I chose. Talking it over with my parents I decided to go another route because I didn't want to be a starving artist. Over the years I have drawn pictures and given them away as gifts and so on mainly working in pencil. By and large however making art went on the back burner, sometimes for years.

As friends got older we had careers and started families and we would only got together on rare occasions for all night RPG sessions. Years went by and I wanted to bring us back together more often so I picked up the fragments of my gaming world and started trying to create a real world book that was cohesive. A large part of that was creating maps and that's where we come to the Cartographer's Guild.

I remember the first day I walked into the lobby here. I was overwhelmed and afraid to say much of anything because there were so many really great map makers here. Two of those who had a lot of influence on me where Ascension and Torstan. There were a lot of you others as well, and some of you I learned really useful skills from like making masks and so on. But those two guys really blew my hat off and where always very encouraging and full of good advice. I'll always be thankful and I know I'm not putting out the full list of names here so don't feel bad if I didn't mention you, it'd take me an hour to go back and recall all of you.

I learned a lot more about geography and how rivers flow and all kinds of stuff I never spent much time thinking about. I had never done any sort of artwork using digital tools and quite frankly I was terrible with them. You would think that as a computer programmer I wouldn't have struggled but my traditional skills just didn't seem to translate right away and so it took about a year before I felt like I was close to making anything equal to what I could do on paper. [A year?! Well, yeah, I only had my spare time which wasn't much to work with.]

I started entering the challenges and kept loosing, coming in somewhere in the middle, then came a series of 2nd and 3rd places, until I started winning a few but that's not the important part. Win or loose I always learned by the bucketful during those challenges. Sometimes the advice came during the WIP which would send me back to the drawing board against my will but in the end always improved what I had. Other times it came during the voting which was frustrating but still so helpful for the next time. And while it was nice to win, just getting some votes helped me not to give up. So for those who threw votes my way over the years while I was learning, "Thank you!" for seeing something worth encouraging. I might not have kept at it without those 'keep up the good work' crumbs.

Unfortunately, my job has gotten out of hand the last 3 years and I've not had enough energy to do much art. I've had a couple nice commissions but one is finished and in limbo (I should ask if I can share that yet) and the other is in process. I really miss being more active here. I have made some very cool friendships and even if I'm not around I still think highly of so many of you guys. Again, I'd name you but I worry I would forget someone.

So what was the question? Sheesh! What a wall of words. I guess this became more of a why I started drawing maps origin story/how much I love this place/miss you all kind of thing and I can't wait to get back into action here soon.

So yeah, to have maps for my own game world.

Now you know why I don't always answer on these things.

[zhar2]

Well just like many of you I started as a kid drawing planets, maps, worlds and so on, I was very interested in cultures, art styles and exotic places. and it developed further when I started conworlding (never played DnD). to me cartography is a way being at one with the world you are exploring or creating.