Exaggerated perspective, how to draw this style of maps?

[mr.darecki]

Hello, guildmates!
I am struggling with the perspective initial grid while starting a map. I'm doing stuff by hand if that matters. Right now, I'm aiming to learn some sort of exaggerated perspective/bird's eye view/pictorial or panoramic maps style? I have no idea how to call it, but I hope you catch the drift.
Here are some resources I've gathered to show you what I mean: LINK. Some images may vary from each other a bit but I believe the rules are similar.

Is there any way to, let's say, distort the image of a regular map to fit it on the exaggerated perspective and start from here (I guess it can be done in graphics manipulating software like Krita)?
Maybe some of you can outline a grid for me on one of the images above?

In the past, I've approached similar style, which I posted here but I feel like it was low effort technically.

I want to be able to draw such maps to

• keep the feeling of realistic distance (objects that are far to the north should appear smaller than those in the foreground)
• be detailed, almost like you would be there and looking at the landscape with your own eyes

Thank you for reading, please share any ideas.

[Falconius]

Looks to me like you're on your way there. Just takes lots of practice. It's also helpful to remember things will be smaller (and less distinct and less dark) the farther away they are. I mention this because your buildings and trees especially are the same size if not bigger as they go back. I'd actually suggest ignoring the perspective distortion and just practice making things look farther away by the way you render them. I'd also practice specifically the perspective distortion (look up three point perspective, it should help, but not all the way because your horizon line with have a very large visual curve, which affects all lines derived from horizon points) with very simple shapes, like blocks.

[waldronate]

For "realistic" drawings, establish your horizon and type of perspective (one, two, or three point). Then pencil in a grid: there are many online references for perspective grids that can be found via your favorite search engine. The grid will act as a reference for sizes and orientation and can be erased during the inking phase. If you have a monitor that's as large or larger than your media and your media is sufficiently transparent to see through, you might be able to place your media directly on the monitor to sketch the grid from there. If you have large media and a projector of some sort, you can get assistance that way.

If you have a perspective transform where your vanishing points are offscreen, you can set up a grid in a 3D drawing package and use that grid to help in sketching the grid on your media. If you are proficient with a 3D package, you can even put in some quick known-scale blocks at various grid locations to make things easier. You'll need to get the grid onto your media as above, but that should be straightforward.

I lack much in the way of patience (and that feeds directly into my apparent lack of drawing skill). Some years back, I wrote a little thing for ProFantasy's Campaign Cartographer software (the PSCALE family of commands) that makes one-point perspective pretty much trivial to do. See the first main topic at https://rpgmaps.profantasy.com/lever...atures-of-cc3/ for an example of how that works and the kind of quicky results that can be generated.

[mr.darecki]

Thank you @Falconius and @waldronate for great tips and clarifying the matter for me!
I decided that I'm gonna practice making objects smaller the farther they go up the north with various perspective grids (already found the online references).
I think I will post here some of my practice insights any day now, so you guys can evaluate if I'm on the right path