North Iterra

I remember reading The Hobbit when I was young, constantly flipping back to the front of the book to study the map of Middle-Earth. That might have been the first hint (other than my awesome drawings of dragons) that I was obsessed with the imagery of fantastical settings.

This is probably the least violent drawing I made as a child after seeing Jurassic Park

Later, as I watched the Lord of the Rings films, I enjoyed absorbing the beautiful scenery of the Shire and Rivendell equally as much as the action-packed adventure. Video games like Zelda and Skyrim made me realize how much fun it would be to create my own fantasy world.

In 2017 I got together with a group of friends to start a Dungeons and Dragons campaign. It was the first time most of us had played (including me), so I picked up the D&D Starter Set from our friendly local game store and we figured it all out together. The set comes with a great adventure book called The Lost Mines of Phandelver, set in the Forgotten Realms - the official D&D setting. I wanted to be the Dungeon Master for our group so that I could be responsible for creating our world, but all the (admittedly handsome) maps were already drawn for me. As the adventure in the book was nearing its climax and I became confident that I knew the game well enough, I decided to transition our story to an original new world. I began writing a mythology, created new characters, and drew a region map.

North Iterra

Click to Embiggen

Because we started in the Forgotten Realms, many of our characters already had backstories in those lands - so some of my towns and landmarks overlap with the official setting. In the story, our adventurers entered from the West near Triboar and are gradually making their way towards their inevitable doom in the wilds of the East. The players were able to collect printed versions of this map when their characters met a cartographer.

Here's how I made it

This outline is a basic story about how I drew this particular map. It's light on specifics so let me know if you want more details. This is my first completed map so I'm still working on nailing-down the process, I plan on making more educational content in the future!

I drew this at the age of thirty-two

I started by pencil-sketching out a map while I was supposed to be working. My best ideas always begin with procrastination. This first drawing is a perfect example of what you can learn from four years of art school. I quickly realized that this wasn't going to be detailed enough for the adventure that I wanted to run, so I started over.

Lego the Cat requesting changes to Silverymoon

This time, I spent many hours at home under the direction of my cat to purrfect the map's layout. He prefers the black-only pencil version, to match his fur (and soul). From there, I scanned it in and moved to the computer. The rest of the work was done with Photoshop and a tablet. *Photoshop terminology incoming*

Yes, it's called "Moistwatch." That place sucks

I went to Google to find a free parchment texture. In Photoshop, I set the parchment as the background layer, then put in my drawing as the next layer up. I increased the contrast of the drawing layer, and set its layer mode to "multiply" so only the lines bleed down to the parchment.

Tracing over my old lines took approximately four trillion hours

Then, I created a new layer to trace over my pencil drawing to get some cleaner lines. I used a simple hard, round brush - no fancy brushes here. Lowering the opacity of the pencil drawing makes this easier. I kept about 95% of my original drawing, changing and adding few things here and there. I started only with the terrain, I decided to add in the towns and labels later. Once I finished tracing, I got rid of the pencil sketch layer.

Here's how it looks with just the new lines. How cool would this be for a coloring book?

Let's Color! The next part was the most fun, and also the most time-consuming. I created a folder for multiple color layers under the lines, but above the parchment. For each type of terrain, I used a different layer. There was a grass layer, a forest layer, a swamp layer, you get it. That allowed me to fill in big blocks of color (with the good old hard & round brush - but fatter this time), then go back and experiment with layer mode settings, and fiddle with hue/saturation adjustments, without having to worry about messing up colors on the other elements.

Subtle but happy little trees

I searched the internet for a neat forest photo to use as a texture. I shrank it down, duplicated it a million times and set it above the green forest layer. Again, I fiddled with the layer modes to get an effect I liked. I ended up inverting the forest photo texture, lowering its opacity to 25% and setting its layer mode to "vivid light".

I drew in all the towns and locales separately from the other lines and colors. It took a lot of little detailing and allowed me to more easily copy/paste the small towns (villages? hamlets? suburbs?). This took a long time too. Come to think of it all the steps took a long time. Jesus, how long did I spend drawing this thing? See if you can find all six of the mushroom patches on the big map!

Finally, I added in the labels. Choosing a spiffy but readable font is important. There are a few places that are hard to read when it's printed - look out for that. I drew the ribbony-bits and compass rose before typing in the letters (and their light outlines), then added the grid last, erasing the lines where they intersect with other elements.

And that's it - stay tuned for more map making and/or D&D content!