Zombie Nirvana Games

I’ve gotten a lot of work done on Fantasy Cartography; I’m going to start taking screenshots and do some preliminary layout later this week.

In the mean time, I put together a map for Silver Lion Studios. I posted a low-res version of it up in the gallery; I’m pretty proud of this one!

I posted a new map in the gallery: the town of Maya. I have a whole backstory in mind for the town. When time permits, it will probably show up in a PDF freebie I have in mind.

I was asked how I did the buildings. Since I wanted to include another Photoshop cartography tip from the upcoming book anyway, that gives me a good excuse to include one of my favorites!

Here’s how I did it:

• STEP ONE – Create the layer: In the Layers palette, click on the Add Fill/Adjustment Layer button and click on Solid Color. Pick a color you’d like for your rooftops. Solid Color layers include a layer mask automatically; use the Paint Bucket to fill it with black, or just hit Ctrl-I to invert it from white to black.
• STEP TWO – Set up the tool: Switch your foreground color to white. Select the Line Shape tool and set it to Fill Pixels. (If you’re not familiar with the Shape tool, take a look up in the Options bar up at the top. You’ll see three rectangles: one with dots on the corners, one with dots on the corners and a Pen in the middle, and a solid white rectangle. These are the three Shape modes, Shape Layers, Paths, and Fill Pixels. The Shape tool is set to Shape Layers by default, which is the one mode we won’t be using for this lesson!) Set the width of the Line to roughly the width of the buildings you’ll be creating; for the Maya map, I went as low as 8 pixels and as high as 30.
• STEP THREE – Add some style: Double click on the layer in the Layer’s palette to bring up the Layer Styles menu. For Maya, I used a small Bevel and Emboss and Drop Shadow.

That’s it! The real trick here is using the Line Shape tool. You can use it to create your buildings at any angle with just two clicks of the mouse, unlike the Rectangle. And since all your really doing is adding blocks of white, you can create complex building shapes just by running the Lines over one or another, or by switching to black and using it to “cut” pieces back out.

In the eastern part of Maya, where the buildings are closer together, you can see an example of this. For those areas, I used the Pen tool to draw in a single, block-sized mega-building, then cut out spaces with the Line tool.

And because you’ve done this on a Solid Color layer, you can change the color of all your buildings on a particular layer by simply double clicking on the layer icon in the Layers palette and selecting a new one.

I had to update WordPress tonight anyway, so I thought I’d try a new look while I was at it. The old green site was OK, but seemed a little bland. This one needs a little work still, but I like it.

If you have any trouble with the site, or any suggestions, please let me know!

Work on Fantasy Cartography is proceeding along faster than I’d have guessed! As it stands now, I’m most likely going to initially release it in several sections.

Part 1, The Basics, will be an overview of some of the tools I regularly use in my mapmaking: layer styles, layer masks, and the like. This one will be released for free.

Part 2, Overland, will cover large-scale outdoor maps: worlds, continents, and countries. I’ll include tips for creating relief maps, elevation maps,  and more.

After that will come Cities and Towns, Interiors, and Dungeons. When they’re all done, I’ll release them as a single PDF bundle as well as compiling them for a print edition with Lulu.

I’m really excited about this one! I’ve been working like mad on maps I’ll be using as examples for the book, including this one (still a work in progress) for the chapter on interiors. I’m hoping folks really enjoy the book and the podcast!