How To Draw A Fantasy Map

In this guide, we make a map for your fantasy world. Fifty-fifty though we are making a fantasy map, we will create an globe like world.

To add believablility to our map, nosotros volition figure out why the continents are shaped the manner they are, how climate works, and how we can place realistic details such as mountain ranges, volcanoes, and rivers in the right places.

The earth and its layers

The world's crust lies upon information technology's mantle of hot stone. Underneath the mantle is an outer core of liquid metal. The inner cadre is a solid ball of metal. Even though the inner core is very hot, the pressure level keeps it from melting.

The crust of our earth is like a cracked egg shell. The cracked parts of the world are called tectonic plates. These slowly move around on top of the earth's pall.

Over the class of millions of years, continents have been colliding and dividing. About 250 million years agone, two great continents collided, creating the supercontinent chosen Pangea.

Afterward near fifty million years, Pangea started to pause apart. Information technology slowly created the continents we accept today.

If you look at our worlds map, yous tin can come across that some continents such as South America and Africa, seem to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.

Outset cartoon a supercontinent on your custom map. Brand certain the landmass covers about 1 third to a quarter of the fantasy map.

Sketch in five to ten large tectonic plates and d ecide which mode the plates are moving.

Next, start splitting your supercontinent up. This is easily washed in pattern programme.

If you are using pen and paper, catch a piece of paper in another color. Roughly cutting your piece of paper up in the shape of your continents, and move them according to your tectonic plate.

Mountain-ranges

When ii of the tectonic plates collide, 1 slides underneath the other one, pushing the other one upwards. This creates mountains.

Lets go on working on our fantasy map. The area's where tectonic plates collide volition accept mount ranges. Lets accept a different colour, like ruby-red, and roughly sketch in where the collisions have place.

Take another color, such as blueish, and start roughly sketching in where tectonic plates would divert from each other.

Volcanoes

When two plates collide, magma from the world's mantle can notice a way up through the cracks in the plate edges. The magma pushes outwards with great force, causing an eruption.

When the plates keep to move, magma can find its mode through the old weak spots where a volcano was previously active. The volcano will erupt again, and the lava will add together another coat of rock on peak, causing the volcano to grow in size.

Volcanic islands come to exists, when magma flows upwards when 2 tectonic plates move abroad from each other. The magma is cooled down by the water of the oceans, creating a layer of volcanic rock. This continues to happen layer upon layer, until a volcanic island pops upwards above the surface of the ocean.

Not all volcanoes come to be at the edge of a tectonic plate.

The Islands of Hawaii for example, are a group of islands formed in the centre of the oceanic plate. These type of islands are very rare, and happen around places called hotspots.

Scientists are not completely certain how hotspots come to exist. 1 theory suggests it happens when magma travels through the earth's drapery, forming a blob of magma under the earth'southward crust.

Over the course of millions of years, the volcano moves together with the tectonic plate. The hotspot however stays roughly in the same location. This creates new volcanic islands, making an island chain.

When drawing tectonic plates on your map, add some volcanic island chains effectually the edges. Likewise add together three or iv island chains created by tectonic hotspots.

Littoral Erosion

Now that nosotros know the location and shape for our continents, and we know where our mountains and islands chains will exist. Information technology is time to add some details.

The forcefulness of the water changes the style the coasts of continents wait. This is chosen coastal erosion.

The constant strength of the water, slowly chips abroad at the coasts. The sediments are moved by the ocean and may wash up somewhere else.

For at present it is enough to know that our coastlines are not perfectly straight. The continents continents may expect like puzzle pieces that can fit together, but erosion jagged up the edges.

Trace the continents you have drawn in, but now roughen up the coast lines a fiddling to simulate erosion.

We already roughly sketched in where our mountains will exist. Now it is fourth dimension to add them. A dissever tutorial on drawing mountains volition be added later.

For now I can recommend Questing Beasts youtube tutorial on how to draw mountains for cartographers.

The Climate System – Sunlight

The most important cistron in our climate system is the sun.

In the movie Star Wars, you can see Luke Skywalker standing on his planet Tatooine, watching two suns set.

With the discovery of the planet Kepler-16b, scientists accept confirmed that there are planets orbiting 2 stars. And then Tatooine like worlds may be possible.

Ii suns would complicate the climate arrangement of our fantasy world by quite a bit. That is why we will stick with i sun for this guide.

Nosotros all know that our earth spins around an axis with the due north pole at the acme, and the south pole at the lesser. And we besides know that the earth revolves around the sunday.

The angle at which the earth revolves around its centrality, and the angle at which the earth revolves around the sun are different from each other.

While the globe revolves effectually the lord's day, different parts of the earth catch more than sunlight.. This causes the seasons of the year.

The places around the equator, receive large amounts of sunlight all year round. Causing them to be the warmer places on world.

A little fleck farther from the equator, we notice the tropical zones. They get more or less sunlight depending of the time of the year. And so they are more affected by the seasons. However, since they are and then close to the equator, they all the same grab a lot of sunlight, making them warm places on earth.

Next to the tropical zones, we take the temperate zones. These are much more afflicted by the seasons. They can become from, very warm in the summertime, to very cold in the wintertime.

Next to the temperate zones, we have the top and the bottom of our centrality, the polar regions or besides known as the arctic and antarctic circumvolve. These receive the least amount of sunlight, causing it to be cold all year around.

The Climate Organization – Weather Cells

Current of air also plays a big role our climate organization. The atmospheric condition system however is very complicated.

For now it is enough to know that there are six donut shaped weather condition cells that environment our globe. If you want to know more details, I suggest that you do some searching on the names of the different conditions cells. The cells are called Hadley Cells, Ferrel Cells, and Polar Cells.

Around the equator, the conditions is warm and moisture. A perfect expanse for pelting forests.

30 degrees north and southward of the equator, the atmospheric condition is warm and dry out. A perfect surface area for deserts.

threescore degrees northward and south of the equator, the weather is colder and wet.

At the north and south pole, the weather is common cold and dry out. If Antarctica would not exist covered by ice, it would exist as dry every bit the Sahara.

The air current in these weather cells follow a certain design. This can crusade certain coastlines to be warmer or colder than they should exist co-ordinate to their latitude.

Get-go imagining what surface area's of your fantasy earth map would take what type of climate.

Fjords

During the ice historic period, glacial ice covered much of the country near the poles.

Over thousands of years, the glacial ice moved back and forward over the lands. Melting and freezing over once more.

Surface area's with high altitude near the coasts, shut to the poles, were affected by this glacial ice a lot. Creating abrupt and steep narrow inlets.

On our earth, nosotros find many fjords in Alaska, Greenland, and Norway on the northern hemisphere. But likewise in New Zealand, Southern Chili, and Antarctica on the southern hemisphere.

When you are drawing your custom map, add some fjords to make your map more than believable.

Rivers

Air current besides plays a big role in the forming of rivers. When clouds hit a mountain range, they will cool down and beginning releasing their rain.

This is why rivers mostly showtime on the windy side of an area with loftier altitude.

Now that we know our wind patterns and where our mountains are, we tin beginning imagining the surface area's where rivers may form.

When cartoon our custom map, we will describe in the globe's biggest rivers. Comparable to the Mississippi river or the Amazon river. When we make a more detailed map of continents or even lands, we can add in smaller streams and rivers.

The rivers kickoff out as thin streams, slowly making their way towards the sea. The direction the way a river curves is affected by wind, distance, and the type of sediment.

Rivers exercise not split into new streams. However other pocket-sized streams might join the river as it movement downwards.

The only exception to the splitting rules is when a river forms a delta. The river carries sediment with information technology, creating a new landmass at the coastline. This happens time after time, creating a delta, with land poking outwards.

Lakes

The world's greatest lakes were created at the end of the ice historic period. The cook h2o of the ice sheets created enormous lakes.

Another mode for lakes to class is the aforementioned style that rivers start. Pelting hits the side of a mountain, the water washes down. Because of the distance difference, waterfalls may appear. The rain collects into a pool, creating a lake.

Other lakes may exist caused past meteors hit the earth, creating a dent. Or old volcanoes, filling upward with water.

When drawing your custom map. Add some big glacial lakes, and some smaller lakes near to mountains

Adding our terrain details

Now that nosotros have a crude thought on how the climate works on our custom map, we can start calculation in detailed terrain.

Go on in mind that area'southward near lakes and rivers will have more vegetation than dry expanse'due south in country.

Start cartoon in your forests, deserts, grasslands, and swamps.

A divide tutorial will exist added on how to describe terrain details such equally forests, grassland, deserts, and swamps. For at present I highly recommend the amazing tutorials of WASD20.

Styling your fantasy map

The next function of the tutorial is prepare in less rules. Effort to work on your own style.

When you are still trying to detect your style, I advise y'all to be inspired by cartographers that yous like.

Imitate the fashion of this map, employ the following.

Start drawing a thick black line on the south e sides of your landmasses. This will give them a 3D issue.

Next outset drawing in a sparse outline along your coast.

Last, add together many small-scale horizontal lines coming out of your landmass.

Now nosotros will add some mapping elements, such as a longitude and latitude grid, a compass rose, and a scale. For these I let myself be inspired by sometime real life earth maps.

Some of my favorite cartographers from history are the father and son, Willem and Joan Bleau. Search for their maps for a peachy source of inspiration.

Add together this stage I will also add some shading to the correct sides of my mountains, hills and forests.

Coloring your fantasy map

The colors of your map play a big role in your fantasy earth/story/function playing campaign.

Call back to yourself, what is will be the full general mood. If it is going to be a highly magical story, you lot might desire to use some purples and blues. Or perchance you are going for night story, featuring the undead, use grey tones. When it is going to be a story featuring devils and demons, use hellish colors like reds and orange.

Maybe you want to leave mood open to interpretation by your readers/players. Then it is a good thought to keep it black and white similar an inked map.

For this map, I imagined a story ready in world similar to 17th century Europe just with the archetype fantasy races. The western continent had only been discovered about 100 years ago, and is at present being explored and colonized. I hope the colors portray a mood of adventure and marvel.

Labeling and typography

The final touch to bring your fantasy earth live, is adding labels. This is easiest done in a design programme.

I will add a separate tutorial for hand fatigued labels some other time.

For this map I used  the Times New Roman font.

There are many unlike styles of labeling in the globe of cartography. The most important rule is, legibility. Make your labels easy to read.

For this map I used the following:

• Oceans, sea's, and continent labels: All Caps, Loose tracking (much space between individual characters).
• Deserts, cliffs, and isle bondage labels: Small Caps, Get-go with a capital, Loose tracking.
• Mountains chain labels: Italic Bold, Tight tracking.
• Cities, villages, and fortress labels: Italic, Tight tracking.

For all the labels, I added a small stroke on the outside, in the color of the background.

When you are labeling an area such as a continent or a body of water, try to get in fit about ii/3 the width of the area. You tin can exercise this past increasing the font size, simply also with tracking, calculation space between individual characters.

When you lot are labeling places, put them on the pinnacle right of your icon. The exception is, when labels would overlap or seem to form one give-and-take, then you lot can move the label in a way that increases legibility.

Click the image to see the map in high resolution (4096 x 2048)

Practice you lot utilise Pinterest? You can support me past Pinning this picture!

Source: http://www.online-tabletop.com/art/fantasy-map/

Posted by: boldendeppoccanot.blogspot.com

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