It is a mapping weekend.

Various things have caused me to build up a backlog of things to do for my gaming endeavors. So my spare time for the past couple of days have been spent clearing getting stuff done. Two of the project were some maps I promised to the friends.

The first a local area that a friend of mine wanted for a 4e campaign. It was fairly straight forward to do and I decided to use my color style.

Like my Gormmah map this feature my new swamp texture setup which I am way happier with. The trick is that I use the same blue as the water but apply a 50% transparency. The resulting greenish blue give the right color to the swampy terrain. My color maps use a harn type of terrain mapping. The color represents vegetation and the fill terrain. The dotted terrain are hills and the rough looking terrain in the SE corner are mountains.

As relayed by Zach here I polished his map of the Middle Isles. While it looks more professional it is still very much his work. What I do is create a bottom layer and paste the image that he sent me. I then traced over it and replicated the notes and terrain he had marked.

This is what I typically do when working other people's products. My job is realize THEIR vision not impose one of my own. I may suggest and inject a few details that flows from what they are trying to do. But the result is still very much their work. I manage to take some pretty rough drawings and still retain the essence of the author work.

Generally island intensive projects like this take a while to do because of all the coast lines. But my Bamboo Pen Tablet made this a lot easier on my hand and quicker. I was very glad to have this.

Today I am doing the maps for my upcoming Scourge of the Demon Wolf. This is an important steps as it will guide the organization of much of my final draft.