Zombie Nirvana Games

Show Notes

• The map we’ll be referencing in the upcoming episodes is right here.
• While you’re looking at the Actions palette, try popping open the fly-out menu and loading some of the other action presets like Textures. You can learn a lot of different techniques just by examining the Texture actions and seeing how they work! (There’s a parchment paper action in there, but I don’t care for how it uses the Texturizer filter.)
• I wish I could’ve added a bit more onto this episode, but the next batch of techniques would’ve pushed me over the 10 minute mark, I think, so I had to cut it a bit shorter than I would’ve liked. Sorry about that.
• Don’t forget to leave a review if you’re watching the show on iTunes!

After a tw0-week vacation, Fantasy Cartography with Adobe Photoshop is back! In this action-packed episode, we’ll start a new map by creating a background and saving it as an Action.

You can check out all the FCAP episodes at Revver, YouTube, or via iTunes or Miro.

Don’t forget to visit ZombieNirvana.com for this week’s show notes and for more information on my upcoming Fantasy Cartography book.

Until next time, thanks for listening, and happy mapping!

With the podcast off the air until next week, I thought some of you might be jonesing for a Photoshop cartography fix. Well, here’s a quickie to tide you over til I can post a preview from the book later this week!

At least half the time I’m creating a new map, I’m not too picky about the exact shape of the individual continents and islands. If you’re like me, there’s a very fast and easy way to layout the basics of a world map in minutes… seconds if you save these steps as an Action in the Actions palette.

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I haven’t mentioned it before, but I spent a heck of a lot of time listening to a heck of a lot of bad music when it came time to pick a theme song for the podcast. I was looking for something appropriately fantasy-ish, of course, but nothing too overwhelming. (Much as I love the main theme in Conan the Barbarian, opening my little cartography show with it would be a bit over the top, don’tcha know.)

When I came across the Brobdingnagian Bards over at PodsafeAudio it was like manna from heaven. I’m a huge fan of folk music of all stripes, both listening to it and playing it*, and while they do have their share of non-traditional tunes (like the Jedi Drinking Song, for instance), the Bards also play a hellacious amount of really good old fashioned Scottish and Celtic music.

Wild Mountain Thyme is a classic Scottish folk song, and it’s long been a favorite of mine. Hopefully, you haven’t minded hearing it – at least bits of it! – for the last 12 weeks. If you want to hear the whole thing, you can listen to it or download it at TheBards.net.  

*Loudly but not necessarily well, on a small collection of guitars and ukuleles. I may not be that good at it (yet), but playing my uke while my 5-year old son belts out sea chanties is good, clean fun.

Show Notes

• Wow… hard to believe it’s been 3 months already!
• I didn’t really have a lot to add on this episode, although that Curves adjustment is pretty cool. I’ve used that exact Curves layer on many of my maps and my (bad) digital photos, and it’s really helped give them some zazz. That S-curve is a very old school Photoshop technique, but it’s a favorite of mine.
• There’s an excellent tutorial on the Curves tool here. Like I said, it’s a bit complicated, but very powerful. It’s more of photography tool, but as you can see it has uses in other fields too.
• I didn’t mention it because it seemed kind of obvious, but you can add a Drop Shadow on the paper layer to pop your map off of the page a bit.
• Someone over in the YouTube comments asked me about the cheesy font I used when I added text to the map a couple of episodes back. It’s not one that I’d normally use for my mapmaking, but it’s broad and bold, so it shows up easily on the videos, which is why I also use it for the closing credits of the show.
• I have, somehow, managed to go 12 episodes without inflicting any funny voices on you. When I start busting out with the Scooby Doo or Pickles the Drummer, you’ll know that FCAP has officially jumped the shark.