THE LEARNING ARCHIVES
Whether you're creating maps for a novel, rpg, or just for fun, this collection of tutorials and map tips will help you create more professional and believable maps for your story!
How to Draw Pine Trees - Top-Down Perspective
Forests breathe life into your city maps, transforming generic landscapes outside the walls into locations that could a secret tomb or shelter a group of bandits. You never know what secrets might be lurking beneath the boughs! Pine trees can tell you something about the environment of the location. Perhaps it's an area with low-quality soil where only the hardiest trees can grow, or maybe it's an alpine location in the mountains. Either way, using different species of trees is a great way to subtly convey something about a location, which makes for a more immersive story for your players or readers.
How to Draw a Cave Entrance
If you want to create interesting maps for your RPG adventure, including points of interest to encourage exploration is key. Discovering a cave entrance in the face of a cliff lends to a number of storytelling possibilities and encounters. But, how exactly do you draw something like that, especially if you’re using a top-down perspective? It’s certainly a challenge, but I want to walk you through the process and share some tricks so you can draw a cave like this on your next map. Let’s start mapping!
Drawing Cliffs on Coastlines in Top Down Perspective
One of the biggest challenges with fantasy maps in a top down perspective is they tend to look a bit flat. Fortunately, there are some simple tricks you can use to build up the layers of the landscape to give a sense of depth. In this Map Tip we’ll be looking at how to draw cliffs on a coastline in this perspective and make them really stand out in your map.