This map was made using CC3‘s Fantasy Worlds style, which is based on the artwork of Swedish cartographer Pär Lindström.
This style works well for large-scale maps covering entire continents and worlds, focusing more on political boundaries and large bodies of water rather than the minutiae of specific regions, cities, waterways and smaller natural features. You can read more about the style and see more sample photos at the Profantasy website.
This is a guest post from Keith Rogers Gordon, who is currently working on a novel called The Keys of Illath. Please note that the maps in this post are all copyrighted by Keith Rogers Gordon.
The Keys of Illath is a cross-genre journey that draws from the realms of fantasy, science-fiction, action-adventure, unsolved mystery, martial arts, epic romance, spiritual exploration and magical possibilities – all while (hopefully!) transcending the expected forms and attempting to arrive at an entirely new understanding of who we are, and what we’re capable of.
Hello! First off I’d like to thanks the fine folks here at FMM for a chance to share these maps. This is an original ‘world’ map that I (Keith) made to accompany an online novel that I am in the process of writing. It was made entirely on Photoshop, and since it was my first map it took several hours to figure out the right way to create the coastlines and stack the layers (of which there are 60+ !). The mountains were hand-drawn, and then actually photographed and edited. Throughout the process I relied on a few different tutorials on-line to create the right look for me, and I hope to make a tutorial of my own in the not too distant future. There are other maps available at illath.wordpress.com, as well as music, art, and of course the chapters of the novel-in-progress! Feel free to check it out. I only ask that (since they accompany an original, copyrighted novel) the place names on these maps be respected and used fairly. Thank you.
And here is some sample music from the Prologue:
Make sure to check out The Keys of Illath.
I made this map for Epic World – Cinematic Landscapes, a sampling album by composer Eduardo Tarilonte. The map will be used as a background on the album cover.
[Hint: If you want to see it at a bigger size, right-click on the image and open it in a new tab or window]
If you take a close look at some of the names, you’ll probably recognize quite a few. I didn’t get lazy with naming things, they’re actually relevant to the product and intentional. The rest of the names were mostly generated with the excellent Everchanging Book of Names.
The landmasses were made with CC3, which is my usual software of choice. The rest was done in PhotoShop because I decided I wanted to do some experimenting. I also got the sea monsters from CC3 symbols, but re-drew them with my new tablet in PhotoShop (that was part of the experiment – never used a tablet before).
The map was greatly inspired by some of the community members of the Cartographer’s Guild.
Unlike most of my maps, which are free to use for commercial or personal use, please only use this one for non-commercial purposes.
This map was made in the Sarah Wroot style. It’s a hand-drawn style with colorful shading that has an interesting and unique visual appeal.
It’s a large file (~500 kb), so prepare for a long wait if you’re on a slow connection. I wanted to make it big enough to see the details.
This map was made with Campaign Cartographer.
Here’s my third attempt at a world map, and my early attempts at adding some blur effects to the terrain.