The mark of an "artist".... every one of the icons looks identical to the next/last... THIS is so very hard for those of us with limited artistic ability and what truly makes the maps look so damn good!
@@JPCoovert and it takes practice to develop mind-muscle memory and control/consistency with drawing techniques. I recommend people to practice drawing every day-- just 10 minutes every day will add up and go a long way to helping people draw these types of cartography projects, even if they don't aspire to be professional artists or anything like that.
J.R.R.Tolkien didn't draw the middle earth map's (or rather, the ones he did draw were rubbish apparently). All the famous/published middle earth maps were actually drawn by his son Christopher Tolkien, after listening to his fathers stories growing up.
Ohhh! Interesting! My high school english teacher was a student of his and she always said he drew the maps, but she could have meant the rubbish ones!
@@shakescan I had a book of Tolkien's artwork...definitely had his own style, rather Art Nouveau...he had a light, simplistic touch and his stuff looks marvelous.
A tip for drawing rivers: rivers can converge (come together) but they won't diverge (split apart). When making rivers, make sure not to diverge your rivers. Most people looking at the map will realize that something about the rivers seems a bit off even if they don't know why it seems off. Also, because water is governed by gravity, they usually start somewhere at high elevation (mountains, hills) and move toward low areas (marshes, lakes, ocean).
Although what you say is completely true he didn't draw diverging rivers. At 3:00 it's showing a river delta and at 3:23 a river ending at the coastline.
@@ReiseLukas They can, but those are at flood plains, and once a river becomes a river delta it's sort of no longer a river (it is and it isn't). Whole rivers still won't split into separate rivers because water flows down to the lowest point with gravity and gravity doesn't go off in different directions. Rivers can change course over time though. So if a section of the river gets gouged out (from perhaps a flood exerting more pressure on a river bank than usual), the river might expand in that direction, especially if it also gouges out the river bed over there. The river might then head off in that direction a bit, which is how rivers change course, but it won't diverge into two separate rivers because the point where it starts to split just gets "eaten up" by the rest pf the river.
Hi, I am a grade 4 teacher is Alberta, Canada. I am using a lot of RPG elements this year to spice up my Language Arts and Social Studies. I am currently gearing up to start a cartography unit dispersed throughout Art and SS. The aim is to start out in fantasy so we can add a level of depth to the RPG adventure stories we are currently working through. The end game though, is to teach them mapping skills and have them create their own maps of the Regions of Alberta. I just stumbled onto this video and wanted to thank you. It is such a great guide and I already feel more confident in teaching this to my students. I can’t wait to spend time working my way through the rest of your material!
Holy cow I wish I had come across this video sooner. One day I'm hoping to write my own novel, but I've always struggled with the world-building part, and I feel like having a map is also very nice for your audience to give them an idea of how your world looks. I've sadly never been too good at drawing, but the icon style at the start is something that even I can do!
As a teen I became enamored in how the maps were drawn for Lord of the Rings and later, the Middle-earth RPG. They were detailed yet easy to read and understand. I've been using those patterns ever since. Awesome stuff, sir.
Hi JP, I was a traditional cartographer working at the Ordnance Survey in Southampton UK back in the 1980s before digitisation rendered our trade obsolete. To my old trained eyes your maps are absolutely superb! They provide a visual representation that is both easy to interpret and also pleasing to look at, I'm really impressed! We used to have to work to a very high degree of precision, all line work had to be to exact width, dotted lines (pex) had to be a uniform number of lines per cm, and so on for every single feature, hence an A4 area would have been several weeks of work in busy areas like mountains or cliffs. However even at those standards of precision we constantly had to decide on which features to simplify (e.g. cliff edges) or omit (e.g. temporary structures), a process called generalisation. And you have followed exactly the same process with your maps, so for example there is no suggestion that each mountain icon depicts an actual mountain, indeed 'to scale' mountains would probably look awful and would provide no useful information for the gamer. Your maps hit a perfect compromise between the required level of accuracy which is necessarily ambiguous (how can you accurately draw "the length of the road is D6 days march") and critical information that needs to be clearly depicted (if you wander into that steaming pond labelled 'acid lake' your adventure ends here). And as for taking hours to get every line width uniform?.... your variable width lines are far more evocative of split quill penmanship which adds a wonderful feeling of antiquity that will increase the level of immersion in the game play (for feature maps you could even use water colour paper and stain the finished map with cold tea, but do check that your ink is waterproof first). And very importantly, they are quick to draw and don't require advanced drawing skills, also very important for your target audience! In summary, your maps are absolutely perfect for their intended purpose... you totally score 'top marks' from me!!
@@JPCoovert You're very welcome. Some carto trivia that you might like... The old 'County Series' OS maps all featured hand drawn cliff symbols that almost look like a curvy script Middle Earth style language (good example is the grid square 2 down and 2nd from left in the example URL below). On maps like Snowdonia the cartographer would be drawing cliffs for weeks on end, and to break the monotony they did sometimes hide their name or other hidden words within the cliff linework. I can't spot any on the linked image, but they are verywell hidden (they had to be... if QC found them they were either rejected for rework, or removed in the next printed edition). I know one of my friends did hide the name of every Pink Floyd album title on a larger scale map of Snowdon, but I've never been able to find an on-line copy. The blue contour lines in the lakes were also hand drawn and, and another friend drew a joke cartoon tugboat steaming along the Grand Union Canal on the very popular Land Ranger map series. He was leaving the OS and knew that QC would remove it, but they missed it and it got printed and distributed. Fun times! www.wayfair.co.uk/Williston-Forge--Snowdonia-UK-National-Park-Landranger-Mapping-Wall-Map-Graphic-Art-V115213835-L1318-K~U004102724.html?refid=GX627378621983-U004102724_139290246_139290267&device=c&ptid=1823931744188&targetid=pla-1823931744188&network=g&ireid=214310209&PiID%5B%5D=139290246&PiID%5B%5D=139290267&device=c&gclid=CjwKCAiAqt-dBhBcEiwATw-ggF-YfQZ5dRAlUo6ruwxGTRIMZBl_pdvMR4LmaMkyCI4LQQA6DhcALBoC6uEQAvD_BwE
I stumbled into this video and in the moment i saw your face it was like: Oh that's the Artwork-guy from Revive. You're a great artist, greetings from Germany.
One thing with the mountains, you can do a volcano by doing a snow topped mountain without the tip, and then do a couple wiggly lines coming up for smoke.
One of the things I like doing for my maps is to put a happy little sun to indicate where the shadows will fall. It does t need a smiley face on it, but it is fun.
I just knew about you today and I am really happy about it I have zero knowledge in drawing and sketching but I love making fantasy maps and your channel helps me a lot❤
You have made me so happy drawing these maps! I use to draw maps just like the when I was a young teen. Man, the nostalgia is overpowering. I just looked up my old DM, the man who introduced me to D&D 30 years ago, and he's still in town. Looks like I'm going to have to start up a new campaign with an old friend!
I learned a lot about map making from the BECMI Gazetteers. They used a similar icon style for everything and it was a revelation to me as a novice. Maps don't have to be works of fine art, just clear and useful, and if they inspire curiosity, wonder, and awe, so much the better.
finally found icon style of thinking all the other videos series primary went over placements of everything and not exactly the style or possible icon choices for stylizing. I have been trying to build a map using isometric pixel art with the look of board game/war room plan maps and leaning the building blocks was the last piece of info I was looking for
I'm making a road map for a road trip. Thank you so much for these super tips. I've got mountains, rivers, towns, pastureland with cattle... it's going to be great. Thanks again.
I don't game so I'm not sure what I will use this for in my bullet journal but I love the way your maps turn out! Looks good even if you don't know how to draw, like myself.
Awesome advice. I am in the middle of making some maps for my game of Dungeon World and this helped me pin down some details. I was undecided until I found your video. Subbed and I will send some pics when the maps are done.
Papermate Flair Pens are quite good for the low price & easy to find. Also love Sakura Pigma Micron pens in all sizes. Favorite gel pen is Uniball Signo in White.
I love these! The simple style looks like something you'd get when a non-cartographer in a smaller town or something copies from a more detailed map. Shows people how to get around, but without the flourishes a professional might be tempted to add to the drawings.
Wow! I'm really impressed by this! As an artist I'm used to always drawing everything extremely detailed and realistic. It's somehow difficult for me to draw stuff in a simple way and I really love the look of this! I would probably spend hours to draw every single tree with lots of details and never actually finish my map. I have to give this a try!
I was thinking of how to make maps for the book I'm currently writing or even scenes or scenarios, yes simplistic works very well for this, thank you for your time.
these videos are the best tutorials on map drawing for me. it makes a lot of fun to draw this way. I would like to see how you are drawing a dungeon with all these thingies there like traps, tables, books and so on - in your special style of drawing.
Wow, at first I was like meh, but then I look at the bar and the video is over. You completely hypnotised me with your work. Keep it up, you're doing great.
Thanks for your videos. Super easy to draw all you could have in your mind. I'm recovering old sensations, with D&D games I mean, and involving my kids, and with this kind of maps, it's easier. Thanks again guy!
I really appreciate your calm yet enthusiastic tone! You teach but not harangue! Please continue to do more of these! How would you draw your icons for parts of your map that are more inspired by the Mid East or the Far East than "European" Fantasy?
I'm not an artist so this is off the top of my head. Half of the buildings will all look the same: they have a horizontal line where the ground is and vertical lines for walls. Since they're just icons, they need to remain simple. So where you can get more unique (besides width and height of the buildings) is the roof. This leads me to think the area to focus on is the roof/top part of the building icon. For example, traditional Japanese buildings had those roofs that are curved inward. For some areas of the middle east, you could have roofs that are pointed bulbs. Keep in mind that houses would have different roofs than what I'm mentioning here. So these are for maybe a city icon, and if you wanted a small town maybe draw a house instead. I would recommend Googling traditional buildings from an area and try to stick to general shapes since a map icon wouldn't be overly detailed.
I really like to thank you very, very much ! I'm wtriting a book wich need maps and vision of a child and your videos gave me both of them. What can I say more than you're inspiring ! Keep going to make us dream and try again and again. Long life to your channel !
This is so helpful! i have a map in a made up series that i've been making for the past few years, and i needed a map for awhile, and now i know how to make one!
I just want to say, that you have wonderful content. I may not watch all you videos, but as an artist I would like to say that I am glad there us someone out there who dedicates time to showing people who are not artists, how to make his like this. You really do deserve more views.
Great video. I just got the Campaign Cartographer 3 collection from Humble Bundle and your tips will help me alot. You'd think it wouldn't matter since it's a software tool, but that just means you need to learn how to keep your maps tidy and maintain a consistent style.
A few coloured pens will also take these maps to the another level. Light-Green for deciduous trees, Dark-Green for conifers, various blues for rivers, lakes and oceans...
I make map notes for my trips exploring offroad Utah this inspires to create something a bit more on the explorer side. It is also quicker to decipher at a glance. Yours's captures an old feel as if written with a quill, awesome idea as I use a mechanical pencil which appears very not adventure inspiring. Thank you.
Wow, very impressive! I really enjoyed your walk-through on this. I love making maps and illustrating, myself. This was wonderful, even for a somewhat experienced hand-drawn mapmaker. They are SO FUN to do, and your positive energy comes across wonderfully!
I like adding color to my maps with colored pencils. You can add two tones of brown for the mountains with one dark and one light to give contrast. Also using pastels work with covering large areas but you need to spray it with workable fixative to prevent the color from smudging.
I spend the whole day searching for some cool map maker and ended her. I am really glad I haven't found a good site for making maps because this is going to be fun! It's the most helpful thing I found about creation of fantasy maps today. Thanks a lot! I've already tried some Tolkien icons and even though I can't draw they looked sooo cool! So tomorrow I'll make a whole map. Thanks a lot again! This really helped me ^-^
This video is awesome! I had no idea where to even start with making a fun map like this, and this makes it so approachable. Really well done. I’m delighted I found it.
I start out planning using the icon style then eventually recreate it in a more detailed version if it is warranted. I sadly don’t get many chances because I mostly just do one shots that don’t last long enough to warrant more detailed maps.
I needed this video back when I was 13 and creating hundreds of imaginary worlds inspired by all the books I read! Thank you for this tutorial, it was super easy to follow.
Oh wow, how cool is that! Thank you for sharing your experience with us 😊I really love cartography and your style is very nice to the eyes and very informative.
Your video was in my recommendations and my oh my do I love this! Drawing used to be one of my passions, but I lost the spark due to mental health problems. I really want to pick it up again. Thank you for rekindling my desire to draw :)
I love this guy, he's really enthusiastic, yet doesn't shout and has a really nice soothing voice, paired with great videos
I concur!
I legit thought I was going to get enthusiastic shouting and was so pleasantly surprised. He also seems chill and an overall cool dude.
U should see morgz
Why does he remind me of Bob Ross tho
@@treefrog4301 I hate morgz
That magical moment where the end of map outline just hit perfectly with the origin point... nice
The mark of an "artist".... every one of the icons looks identical to the next/last... THIS is so very hard for those of us with limited artistic ability and what truly makes the maps look so damn good!
It's just a matter of slowing down a little! It also helps to plan out in pencil first.
@@JPCoovert and it takes practice to develop mind-muscle memory and control/consistency with drawing techniques. I recommend people to practice drawing every day-- just 10 minutes every day will add up and go a long way to helping people draw these types of cartography projects, even if they don't aspire to be professional artists or anything like that.
J.R.R.Tolkien didn't draw the middle earth map's (or rather, the ones he did draw were rubbish apparently). All the famous/published middle earth maps were actually drawn by his son Christopher Tolkien, after listening to his fathers stories growing up.
Ohhh! Interesting! My high school english teacher was a student of his and she always said he drew the maps, but she could have meant the rubbish ones!
The hobbit map was drawn by jrr tolkien. The lord of the rings map was by his son.
Having studied JRR Tolkien as Artist and Illustrator, I disagree. JRR Tolkien had OUTSTANDING maps.
@@shakescan I had a book of Tolkien's artwork...definitely had his own style, rather Art Nouveau...he had a light, simplistic touch and his stuff looks marvelous.
Ahw, that's pretty cool.
Icon Map 2:49
Icon guide 6:26
Tolkien-style Map 10:07
Tolkien-style Guide 17:28
Best line: "If you know how to draw the alphabet..." LOL. love it.
the intro wasn't even done and i subscribed. ready for the rest of this video.
A tip for drawing rivers: rivers can converge (come together) but they won't diverge (split apart). When making rivers, make sure not to diverge your rivers. Most people looking at the map will realize that something about the rivers seems a bit off even if they don't know why it seems off.
Also, because water is governed by gravity, they usually start somewhere at high elevation (mountains, hills) and move toward low areas (marshes, lakes, ocean).
Although what you say is completely true he didn't draw diverging rivers. At 3:00 it's showing a river delta and at 3:23 a river ending at the coastline.
@@danielr. Aye, I wasn't critiquing any part of the video, I was just adding a tip in the comments that didn't get covered in the video. 👍
Don't they diverge in deltas?
@@ReiseLukas They can, but those are at flood plains, and once a river becomes a river delta it's sort of no longer a river (it is and it isn't). Whole rivers still won't split into separate rivers because water flows down to the lowest point with gravity and gravity doesn't go off in different directions.
Rivers can change course over time though. So if a section of the river gets gouged out (from perhaps a flood exerting more pressure on a river bank than usual), the river might expand in that direction, especially if it also gouges out the river bed over there. The river might then head off in that direction a bit, which is how rivers change course, but it won't diverge into two separate rivers because the point where it starts to split just gets "eaten up" by the rest pf the river.
Always worth doing a bit of geography homework before making a map. It can help add in interesting features, like oxbow lakes and volcanic calderas
Hi, I am a grade 4 teacher is Alberta, Canada. I am using a lot of RPG elements this year to spice up my Language Arts and Social Studies. I am currently gearing up to start a cartography unit dispersed throughout Art and SS. The aim is to start out in fantasy so we can add a level of depth to the RPG adventure stories we are currently working through. The end game though, is to teach them mapping skills and have them create their own maps of the Regions of Alberta.
I just stumbled onto this video and wanted to thank you. It is such a great guide and I already feel more confident in teaching this to my students. I can’t wait to spend time working my way through the rest of your material!
Such a cool way to teach kids!
Where were you in my 4th grade LA and SS classes?? I'm jealous of your students haha
Thumbs up for you as a teacher!
I basically had to learn all my "cartography skills" from videogame maps lol
That sounds awesome. If you tried to do that here in America they'd probably try to throw you in jail :(
hows it going? :D
This is one of the NICEST videos I've ever seen.
I don't know how this video found me, but I'm thrilled it did!
Holy cow I wish I had come across this video sooner. One day I'm hoping to write my own novel, but I've always struggled with the world-building part, and I feel like having a map is also very nice for your audience to give them an idea of how your world looks. I've sadly never been too good at drawing, but the icon style at the start is something that even I can do!
ooh such a relieve, you are the incarnation of be enthusiastic without a yelling at all
As a teen I became enamored in how the maps were drawn for Lord of the Rings and later, the Middle-earth RPG. They were detailed yet easy to read and understand. I've been using those patterns ever since. Awesome stuff, sir.
Hi JP, I was a traditional cartographer working at the Ordnance Survey in Southampton UK back in the 1980s before digitisation rendered our trade obsolete. To my old trained eyes your maps are absolutely superb! They provide a visual representation that is both easy to interpret and also pleasing to look at, I'm really impressed!
We used to have to work to a very high degree of precision, all line work had to be to exact width, dotted lines (pex) had to be a uniform number of lines per cm, and so on for every single feature, hence an A4 area would have been several weeks of work in busy areas like mountains or cliffs. However even at those standards of precision we constantly had to decide on which features to simplify (e.g. cliff edges) or omit (e.g. temporary structures), a process called generalisation. And you have followed exactly the same process with your maps, so for example there is no suggestion that each mountain icon depicts an actual mountain, indeed 'to scale' mountains would probably look awful and would provide no useful information for the gamer. Your maps hit a perfect compromise between the required level of accuracy which is necessarily ambiguous (how can you accurately draw "the length of the road is D6 days march") and critical information that needs to be clearly depicted (if you wander into that steaming pond labelled 'acid lake' your adventure ends here). And as for taking hours to get every line width uniform?.... your variable width lines are far more evocative of split quill penmanship which adds a wonderful feeling of antiquity that will increase the level of immersion in the game play (for feature maps you could even use water colour paper and stain the finished map with cold tea, but do check that your ink is waterproof first). And very importantly, they are quick to draw and don't require advanced drawing skills, also very important for your target audience!
In summary, your maps are absolutely perfect for their intended purpose... you totally score 'top marks' from me!!
what a compliment! thank you!
@@JPCoovert You're very welcome. Some carto trivia that you might like... The old 'County Series' OS maps all featured hand drawn cliff symbols that almost look like a curvy script Middle Earth style language (good example is the grid square 2 down and 2nd from left in the example URL below). On maps like Snowdonia the cartographer would be drawing cliffs for weeks on end, and to break the monotony they did sometimes hide their name or other hidden words within the cliff linework. I can't spot any on the linked image, but they are verywell hidden (they had to be... if QC found them they were either rejected for rework, or removed in the next printed edition). I know one of my friends did hide the name of every Pink Floyd album title on a larger scale map of Snowdon, but I've never been able to find an on-line copy.
The blue contour lines in the lakes were also hand drawn and, and another friend drew a joke cartoon tugboat steaming along the Grand Union Canal on the very popular Land Ranger map series. He was leaving the OS and knew that QC would remove it, but they missed it and it got printed and distributed.
Fun times!
www.wayfair.co.uk/Williston-Forge--Snowdonia-UK-National-Park-Landranger-Mapping-Wall-Map-Graphic-Art-V115213835-L1318-K~U004102724.html?refid=GX627378621983-U004102724_139290246_139290267&device=c&ptid=1823931744188&targetid=pla-1823931744188&network=g&ireid=214310209&PiID%5B%5D=139290246&PiID%5B%5D=139290267&device=c&gclid=CjwKCAiAqt-dBhBcEiwATw-ggF-YfQZ5dRAlUo6ruwxGTRIMZBl_pdvMR4LmaMkyCI4LQQA6DhcALBoC6uEQAvD_BwE
Thank you for not being arrogant about it!
This has proved invaluable in my artistic journey. I thank you 3 years later!
I stumbled into this video and in the moment i saw your face it was like: Oh that's the Artwork-guy from Revive. You're a great artist, greetings from Germany.
Thanks this will really help for my D&D campaign
One thing with the mountains, you can do a volcano by doing a snow topped mountain without the tip, and then do a couple wiggly lines coming up for smoke.
One of the things I like doing for my maps is to put a happy little sun to indicate where the shadows will fall. It does t need a smiley face on it, but it is fun.
I just knew about you today and I am really happy about it I have zero knowledge in drawing and sketching but I love making fantasy maps and your channel helps me a lot❤
You have made me so happy drawing these maps! I use to draw maps just like the when I was a young teen. Man, the nostalgia is overpowering. I just looked up my old DM, the man who introduced me to D&D 30 years ago, and he's still in town. Looks like I'm going to have to start up a new campaign with an old friend!
That is amazing! Congratulations.
I learned a lot about map making from the BECMI Gazetteers. They used a similar icon style for everything and it was a revelation to me as a novice. Maps don't have to be works of fine art, just clear and useful, and if they inspire curiosity, wonder, and awe, so much the better.
Brilliant! Thank you.
This is how you do a wonderful tutorial that covers and shows so many things. Just wonderful.
+1 for showcasing Isle of Dread. 40 years after 1st playing that module, it is still my favorite (with my original version framed in my office).
finally found icon style of thinking all the other videos series primary went over placements of everything and not exactly the style or possible icon choices for stylizing. I have been trying to build a map using isometric pixel art with the look of board game/war room plan maps and leaning the building blocks was the last piece of info I was looking for
It's really relaxing to watch someone drawing fantasy maps, thank you.
I'm making a road map for a road trip. Thank you so much for these super tips. I've got mountains, rivers, towns, pastureland with cattle... it's going to be great. Thanks again.
this is a lovely video to watch even when you are not even considering drawing a fantasy map. Thanks algorithm.
I have ALWAYS struggled with my maps! Thank you! You weren't kidding when you said the mountains could be easy! They're so much better now!
I don't game so I'm not sure what I will use this for in my bullet journal but I love the way your maps turn out!
Looks good even if you don't know how to draw, like myself.
Awesome advice. I am in the middle of making some maps for my game of Dungeon World and this helped me pin down some details. I was undecided until I found your video. Subbed and I will send some pics when the maps are done.
Why did TH-cam wait 2 years to recommend this video to me? I needed it
Awesome!
Papermate Flair Pens are quite good for the low price & easy to find.
Also love Sakura Pigma Micron pens in all sizes. Favorite gel pen is Uniball Signo in White.
I love these! The simple style looks like something you'd get when a non-cartographer in a smaller town or something copies from a more detailed map. Shows people how to get around, but without the flourishes a professional might be tempted to add to the drawings.
I love your simple and clean styles, both the symbol and Tolkien styles. Very nice!
super easy!super simple!
so pretty😍
気に入りました
thank you！
4 years late but the first one saved me! I've been trying for years trying to make a map for a project but could never get it to look good!
Wow! I'm really impressed by this! As an artist I'm used to always drawing everything extremely detailed and realistic. It's somehow difficult for me to draw stuff in a simple way and I really love the look of this! I would probably spend hours to draw every single tree with lots of details and never actually finish my map. I have to give this a try!
I was thinking of how to make maps for the book I'm currently writing or even scenes or scenarios, yes simplistic works very well for this, thank you for your time.
Man, thank you so much for this art class.
Love these, trying to start my own map making ideas, this was a big help.
Dude, I love those maps. Ur a pretty darn good fantasy fiction cartographer
Thank you! I got stuck with the prompt "map" for Inktober this year. This inspires me to do it now without fear and have fun with it.
The tolkien is the one that i use as i got it from the Shannara series.
these videos are the best tutorials on map drawing for me. it makes a lot of fun to draw this way. I would like to see how you are drawing a dungeon with all these thingies there like traps, tables, books and so on - in your special style of drawing.
This video has been really helpful and know I actually know where to start and why.
I used to draw a lot.. .i love tolkien maps.. .i dont know what im doing here but i loved your video xD keep the cool content !
The power of consummate V's truly knows no bounds.
Wow, at first I was like meh, but then I look at the bar and the video is over. You completely hypnotised me with your work. Keep it up, you're doing great.
Thanks for your videos. Super easy to draw all you could have in your mind. I'm recovering old sensations, with D&D games I mean, and involving my kids, and with this kind of maps, it's easier. Thanks again guy!
I can't wait to try it. Thank you so much!
I really appreciate your calm yet enthusiastic tone! You teach but not harangue! Please continue to do more of these! How would you draw your icons for parts of your map that are more inspired by the Mid East or the Far East than "European" Fantasy?
I'm not an artist so this is off the top of my head. Half of the buildings will all look the same: they have a horizontal line where the ground is and vertical lines for walls. Since they're just icons, they need to remain simple. So where you can get more unique (besides width and height of the buildings) is the roof. This leads me to think the area to focus on is the roof/top part of the building icon. For example, traditional Japanese buildings had those roofs that are curved inward. For some areas of the middle east, you could have roofs that are pointed bulbs. Keep in mind that houses would have different roofs than what I'm mentioning here. So these are for maybe a city icon, and if you wanted a small town maybe draw a house instead. I would recommend Googling traditional buildings from an area and try to stick to general shapes since a map icon wouldn't be overly detailed.
Man, those miniature drawings look awesome
This combined with my big Minecraft projects = perfection
I really like to thank you very, very much ! I'm wtriting a book wich need maps and vision of a child and your videos gave me both of them. What can I say more than you're inspiring ! Keep going to make us dream and try again and again. Long life to your channel !
Thanks dud, I build a map because of you, and that's make me have more value for myself
I love your maps! Totally brought me back to dragon warrior, ultima, on NES.
Awesome T-shirt!
Thanks!
Great Job, I love your Maps... and all that iconic things...
Loved this whole video. My 11yr old son is hyped about RPG map making. Thank you for this tutorial.
Also, awesome FTL shirt!
This is so helpful! i have a map in a made up series that i've been making for the past few years, and i needed a map for awhile, and now i know how to make one!
For a desert I draw a simple cow skull and ribs giving the idea of bones bleached in the sun, or if its sahara style desert I draw simple wavy dunes.
Thanks for this video. I can’t wait to try it out myself!
Absolutely fantastic video.
I just want to say, that you have wonderful content. I may not watch all you videos, but as an artist I would like to say that I am glad there us someone out there who dedicates time to showing people who are not artists, how to make his like this. You really do deserve more views.
Great video. I just got the Campaign Cartographer 3 collection from Humble Bundle and your tips will help me alot.
You'd think it wouldn't matter since it's a software tool, but that just means you need to learn how to keep your maps tidy and maintain a consistent style.
A few coloured pens will also take these maps to the another level. Light-Green for deciduous trees, Dark-Green for conifers, various blues for rivers, lakes and oceans...
9:19 that's me!
Thank you sir. Currently starting to prep a Mastadon campaign and you just gave me my map technique.
Thank you Sir for this fantastic video!
I make map notes for my trips exploring offroad Utah this inspires to create something a bit more on the explorer side. It is also quicker to decipher at a glance. Yours's captures an old feel as if written with a quill, awesome idea as I use a mechanical pencil which appears very not adventure inspiring. Thank you.
Wow, very impressive! I really enjoyed your walk-through on this. I love making maps and illustrating, myself. This was wonderful, even for a somewhat experienced hand-drawn mapmaker. They are SO FUN to do, and your positive energy comes across wonderfully!
I like adding color to my maps with colored pencils. You can add two tones of brown for the mountains with one dark and one light to give contrast. Also using pastels work with covering large areas but you need to spray it with workable fixative to prevent the color from smudging.
Super video! Straight to the point, easy to understand, easy to to apply. Thanks! Will use these tips right away!
Great video and instructions! your enthusiasm is contagious, I love that you speak with your hands! Thank you a bunch!
I spend the whole day searching for some cool map maker and ended her. I am really glad I haven't found a good site for making maps because this is going to be fun! It's the most helpful thing I found about creation of fantasy maps today. Thanks a lot! I've already tried some Tolkien icons and even though I can't draw they looked sooo cool! So tomorrow I'll make a whole map. Thanks a lot again! This really helped me ^-^
I want to see the result! I am still practicing the icons...
what did she do to you?
This video is awesome! I had no idea where to even start with making a fun map like this, and this makes it so approachable. Really well done. I’m delighted I found it.
Nice Icon Style n.n Love it. Would love to see your skills applied on Edegard n.n
I start out planning using the icon style then eventually recreate it in a more detailed version if it is warranted. I sadly don’t get many chances because I mostly just do one shots that don’t last long enough to warrant more detailed maps.
Hands down best map video I have seen! So many great examples and it's still a concise video not overly long. Great job!
I think this was one of the best drawing tutorials for maps. It has really motivated me to do something for D&D or a fantasy story ❤
¡Gracias!
Thank you for making such an informative and beautiful video.
I'm doing my own fantasy map right now and watching your tips. Thank you
I needed this video back when I was 13 and creating hundreds of imaginary worlds inspired by all the books I read! Thank you for this tutorial, it was super easy to follow.
Oh wow, how cool is that! Thank you for sharing your experience with us 😊I really love cartography and your style is very nice to the eyes and very informative.
This is amazing, thank you!
Omg yes I want to try this
It's like being a discoverer of unexplored lands.
You have a very soothing voice and have a very concise way of teaching. I love it.
Your video was in my recommendations and my oh my do I love this! Drawing used to be one of my passions, but I lost the spark due to mental health problems. I really want to pick it up again. Thank you for rekindling my desire to draw :)
drawing maps is a great place to start! have fun!!!
Thanks for showing this! I'm not into role playing but I have a small interest in world building. Drawing fantasy maps is stimulating and fun.
Thank you very much, now I know how easy it is to draw maps to illustrate my imagination!! 🎉😂
Thankyou I do everything by hand cause I suck with tech and this really helps. Your amazing and keep doing what your doing
One of the best tutorial about icon styles i ever seen. Just huge thank you.