Therafim

UPDATE (finally)

Well, it certainly took me long enough (far too long) to update this map. Not even the holidays or my part time job starting up again can really justify how long it’s taken me to get this far; all I can say is that it hasn’t been easy. Campaign Cartographer was difficult enough to get a handle on, and it has quickly become my single most disliked software at least in regards to cartography. That being said, I think I can be reasonably proud of how this map is turning out, and I’m optimistic about finishing it up. So – here’s what I’ve managed to get done so far, with a close-up shot of one of the most recently finished sections to show the resolution of the final image. Note that the full world map image is at the full resolution and as such is a significantly large image (600 dpi, ~11″ x ~7″).

Full map, at full 600 dpi resolution; very large file, may load slowly

 

Building Avencourt

Well, I’m still working on this map and finally making some real progress towards a completed draft. The image above is a top-down parallel projection view from within SketchUp, with all the buildings redrawn to fit within the new walls & towers layout. I increased the size of the Royal Palace and the walls around it (on the inside of the town), and I drew in entirely new building footprint shapes within the Royal Palace district itself, for the most part. At the moment, the only thing missing is the Tartarus Prison (other than the terrain, which I’ll be adding in by hand during the final pass). I’ve been having some trouble placing it just right in Sketchup, and since most of the prison itself is actually underground, I think I may just set it up once I get the map into Photoshop for tweaking.

I still plan on printing out the map and tracing over it by hand in pen to get the best hand-drawn quality for the lines. Below is an idea of the town in parallel projection (again, just a SketchUp screenshot):

The colors in both these images are just part of the SkU style I selected to make the images more readable. The final colors will be more in keeping with the 17th century style of the maps referenced by the client.

 

Therafim Update

*NOTE: THIS IMAGE FILE IS EXTREMELY LARGE*
(I’ve posted such a large image file in order to send the highest resolution file I have to the commissioner.)

This is another map commission I took several months ago that has, unfortunately, taken far too long to really get underway. This is, in part, due to my lack of experience with CC3 (Campaign Cartographer 3), and partly due to my regular inability to overcome any failure I experience when using the program. It’s also frustrating that I have to place symbols “front to back” and it’s exceptionally difficult to select and send anything behind something else; there isn’t even an option to bring something forward! The lack of (good) documentation is also a serious problem for me, although the video tutorials on YouTube have been pretty helpful.

Setting aside that little rant, I have, fortunately, managed to reach a point where work on this map is going fairly smoothly, if a little slowly. In the interest of ensuring nothing is just slap-dash-edly placed in an effort to get things down “somewhere”, I confess to spending a fair amount of time laying down symbols and then deleting all or most and starting over again once I get the general layout and placement the way I want it.

So far no labels, but the entire northern ‘pole’ (“Rimevast”) is complete, and as you can see I’ve added in a single city on the northeastern-most continent (“Autumn Land”); it’s supposed to be due south from the city just north on Rimevast, so I thought I’d drop it in now.

Next step is Autumn Land, followed by … whatever continent/landmass I take a shine to after that. Labels will be added last since most of them are actually fairly easy to remember.