According to the map drawing. How to draw a beautiful map of the territory

Hi all! Sorry I haven't written for a long time. The disease has completely overcome. While I was sick I had time to think about what else I wanted to write about. The result was this lesson.

Every time I think about how to write a lesson, I try to show the techniques that I use in my work as a designer. For example, today I will try to show how this nice map is drawn.

Preparation

First and most importantly, turn on the music! Personally, it usually helps me to draw a cheerful dram (I really liked the latest release from Chase & Status – End Credits).

Second, make sure your computer is turned on. Seriously. Enough chatting, let's get started.

Settings

No special mood is needed. Create a new web document and simply click OK.

Getting Started

First of all, you will need maps to use as a template. However, if you have a crazy photographic memory, you can do without them.

I used a screenshot of a road and a shopping center as a map.

Coming up with a map legend

Before we start, it would be nice to figure out how we will designate various roads and buildings.

Here's what I came up with:

This is a fairly simple legend, but depending on the complexity of the task, you can add or remove some details.

Roads are drawn quite simply. Select the Line Segment Tool [\] and draw segments to which we add strokes of different colors and thicknesses.

Creating a Brush

Select the road designation and open the Brush window. Click on the Options button (the small icon with three lines in the upper right corner). This will open Brush Options, select New Brush.

You will be presented with the following dialog box. Select New Art Brush and click OK.

A new window will open in which you need to configure the settings. ABOUT! Everything here is exactly what we need. All that remains is to enter the name of the brush.

Repeat this procedure for each type of road.

Drawing Road

Add our map to the chandelier document. I did this using the command File > Place... Then I blocked the card so it wouldn't interfere ( Object > Lock > Selected)

Use Pen Tool [P] to draw the road. Just select a brush and start painting! Repeat this process for all the main roads.

Crossroads

As you may have noticed, the lines sometimes don't line up correctly at intersections. It's easy to fix.

In some cases, simply changing the order of the layers is enough. Use Ctrl + [ and Ctrl +] to adjust the layer order.

In some cases, things are much more complicated. Then I create shapes with a pen that I put on top of the lines that go wrong.

This is one of several drawing lessons geographical maps, which I create for , an amazing group that I help develop.

If you used this lesson, tell me, show me, I would really like to see what you came up with! And don't be shy, ask questions too!

For this tutorial you will need a font Booter Zero Five(See the link at the end of the lesson).

This map making tutorial involves (imaginary) maps that look more like fantasy or pirate maps. There are no environmental elements on them. If you want to create a map for your world / just because / or for something else, you will get it in just one hour of work!

Before we begin... you'll need Photoshop, a map file, and a font (see link at end of tutorial). It would also be a good idea to have on your computer a scanned photo of some landscape that you would like to depict. I used Photoshop CS3 Extended to create my map. I also used brushes for some parts of the work.

STEP 1

Take a close look at this screenshot. Don't forget to Save it As... and create a layer for the background.

STEP 2

If you have a sketch, scan it or open a photo. Open it in a separate PS file, increase its brightness if necessary (Image – Adjustments – Brighten/Contrast). Insert an image by dragging it onto the map file. You can change the size of the image in two ways: either by clicking Edit – Transform – Resize (Edit – Transform – Scale), or by holding the SHIFT key and dragging the diagonal arrows that appear at the corners of the image.

STEP 3

Regardless of whether you imported an image or not, create a new layer on top of the Map layer, grab a brush and start painting your landscape. It's better to make it a little larger than the image itself.

STEP 4

After completing the sketch, take the eraser and go over the outer edges of the sketch. They will be crooked and out of line, so you will need to go over these lines a few times to clean everything up. If you want to make islands, make them now.

STEP 5

Now you can take the quick selection tool and select everything that is outside of your land. After that, we start doing even more erasing; no continent or country is perfectly straight, round or angular. Let's add debris, depressions and cracks all over our map! =P Also, add some less-than-ideal-shaped rivers and lakes. Your people will surely need water to survive!

STEP 6

Population! Open the Cities group, and make the Capitol...more precisely the Capital (capital mistakenly turned into capitol) and the Town visible. The capital is circled in red. You'll probably have more than one town/city/village/etc., and here's how to duplicate them: second-click on the Town layer and select Duplicate Layer from the list. , which will appear. The new city will appear on top of your original city. Remember this for the next step!

STEP 7

Open the Landscape group. You have a choice of more realistic and hand-drawn objects. To prevent the picture from looking ridiculous, use only one of these styles. You can place these objects wherever you want, and you can also duplicate (multiply) them. When you “plant” trees on your property, place mountains, rocks and forests, and consider the environment if you have not already done so. Civilization and vegetation, for example, tend to appear where there are sources of water. If you need to resize something, use the technique described in STEP 2.

STEP 8

Open the Text group. It contains the following layers: River/Forest name, Town name, and Continent name. You can use a wider variety of fonts (eg Calibri for forest names, Juice for country names, etc.). The easiest way to make the font fit: create a duplicate original text, and change its font. Next, let's play with the effects. In this case, the outer glow and drop shadow look very good here. Don't forget to name all the worlds, continents, countries, regions, states, villages, settlements, cities, capitals, oceans, rivers, lakes, mountains and plains. You don't have to name every detail on the map, but it will be annoying.

And you're done! WOW! Well, at least unless you really want to make your card something one-of-a-kind. If you still want...

ACCESS TO A NEW LEVEL IS OPEN!!

Scroll down the page to see the most interesting, but completely optional effects that can be applied to the card.

SUPER-DRUPER EFFECTS

The following is optional, but it contains some information to help improve your map.

Card Paper

If you want more emphasis and texture on your card, you can change the background! First, create a new layer on top of the Map layer. Take a brush, select a white color, and get to work. Personally, I like scatter brushes for this, but you can use any other brushes, for example, with coins, ships, animals, plants, etc.

Pay attention to the screenshot below, where you can see the changes after brushing. If you are using a scatter brush (or any other brushes with unusual patterns), work it over the entire surface of the card so that there are no empty spots.

Add Brightness

Does your map seem not bright enough? Click Image – Adjustments and you will see the following options: Hue/Saturation, Brightness/Contrast and Curves, which are the best adjustment options for our map. Go ahead, experiment! Notice the difference between this screenshot and the one above. Thanks to the Brightness/Contrast correction.

Guide Arrows

No decent map can do without a compass!

The layer with the Compass (compass) is placed under the group of layers Landscape (landscape). Place it in an area where there is no dry land, adjusting it to size if necessary. I also like to add all sorts of effects to the compass. Experiment! In the screenshot you can see my favorite settings (the words highlighted with a “marker” are the names of various effects).

A watermark is protection from paranoids (me included). Watermarks can protect your work from theft. If you have your own signature - or even if you want to use your name, email, dA page address - you can add it. Create a new layer (normal or text). All you need to do is add a watermark to a new layer, adjust it to size and reduce the Opacity (Opacity) or leave it as you like. Speaking of watermarks and liking... this entire tutorial is watermarked... don't even think about stealing it!

Also, if you want to create paths and signs on the map to give it a taste of ADVENTURE, just add a new layer on top of the land layer, grab a brush, pick a color close to the color of the map, and paint! You can also use humorous brushes, like the sea dragon in my map.

MAP IS READY!

Download font Booter Zero Five you can here: You cannot download files from our server
- Download with object layers

You can also watch this lesson in video format!

Often in work it is necessary to place a plan, diagram or map of the territory. Most examples of good work are made, as a rule, using minimalist techniques: simple lines and shapes, maximum information simplicity and accessibility. But when you try to create something of your own, you end up with a flat, inexpressive, cheap picture. Personally, I struggled with this issue for a very long time. And distinguish good map from a bad one, and even more so, I didn’t manage to learn how to draw something more or less decent right away.

I would like to talk about the map using an example of recent work. I was faced with a task: to improve the design of the map of the low-rise housing fair territory. They provided me with the original card. I think doing this from scratch won’t be too difficult either.

First you need to figure out what is bad about it.

After weak points identified, you can start working. To begin with, I took the base of the card and simplified it as much as possible: I reduced the number of colors to three, removed unnecessary lines at the junction, all signatures and symbols. In general, simplifying as much as possible is already a great step towards improving any work. The result is something quite pleasing to the eye. Please note that I did not touch the lines themselves at all, they remained as simple as they were at the beginning.

Next I wanted to make it a little more interesting and add volume. If we skipped this step and then did everything else, we would get the same neat, but only flat map, these can also be found quite often.

Since I’m not a 3D guru and I don’t know how to work in 3D graphics programs at all, I decided to make do on my own - Photoshop and Illustrator. First, I take the map blank, transfer it to a psd document, not forgetting to take into account the size of the future map when printing. When dragging, the map first turns into a vector smart object (to remain editable), and then I convert it to a regular smart object (to be able to transform the map). I transform the resulting “sandwich” using Transform - Perspective to give the plane the proportions characteristic of a three-dimensional look.

I transfer the resulting plane into Illustrator, not forgetting to immediately set the required dimensions of the future map. The easiest way to complete the three-dimensional look is to complete the houses by hand. In general, they can be copied from one, but the viewing angle due to the perspective view on the left and right of the map is quite different. Therefore, for each of the four sectors of the map, I drew a separate house, and only then duplicated it by copying.

Next are the signatures. Let's start with the house numbers. Initially, the sectors on the map were painted in colors that did not combine well with each other and with the map itself. The colors on the background of the card are soft, warm, and gray- neutral, it goes with everything. You can maintain the original division by color (blue, yellow, red, green), but take less “flashy”, muted shades of the same colors. Ideally, it would be nice to assemble a palette using a color wheel or find ready-made palettes of suitable shades on the Internet, but in this example I just selected the color by eye.

The house number icons are quite bright, so I make them the smallest design elements. The rounded square and font are part of the initial layout design I'm working within. Yes, they are not very important - the main thing is that the house numbers do not steal all your attention and make it possible to see what is underneath them. I made the global icons larger - garden tools, parking, smoking area, because there are not very many of them on the map. In general, the more elements of the same type, the more unified, small, bright and minimalistic they should be made. The icons themselves are completely ordinary, they can be found by searching “%subdjectname% icon” in Google in any quantity. What's important is that I made them more readable. For example, a cigarette icon is much clearer than an abstract green circle; To understand it, you don’t need to go into the legend and read what’s written there.

At the very end of the work, on the approved map, the customer asked me to add advertising spaces on the map: a logo and a couple of lines of text that would relate to a specific house. Everything on the map is already extremely dense; adding anything else means making it unreadable. So I used callouts.

1) We drive the cat away and take a sheet of drawing paper (it’s good when it’s not just whatman paper, but paper with some kind of texture, for example watercolor).

2) To make it convenient for us to draw, and for the pictures to be even and not warped, we stretch the paper onto the tablet. To do this, we soak it well with water, place it on the tablet and smooth it out so that there are no air bubbles left.

3) Fold the edges of the paper and glue them to the tablet with PVA glue, Moment Crystal or Titanium. First glue one side, then the opposite side (pulling slightly). Then glue the remaining two sides one by one.

4) We carefully bend the corners and glue them too.

5) The tablet is stretched and now it needs to be tinted in a pleasant shade of antique parchment.

6) To do this, we go to the bathroom so as not to spread dirt on the desktop. Again we kick out the cat, which managed to move there and is melting on the warm floor.

7) Dilute a concentrated coffee solution in any container. The cheaper the coffee, the better (there is more dye)))

8) We can take a sponge and gently soak all the paper with coffee, but we are real artists, so we just splash the coffee onto the paper and smear it with our hands. Doctor, in this spot I see...

9) The paper on the tablet will appear in small waves, but don’t worry about it – they will smooth out after drying. Our coffee can flow into these waves, so periodically you need to tilt the tablet in different sides, dispersing these puddles.

10) I was too lazy to do this, so the coffee dried out in streaks. Sometimes they are even beautiful, but this time I don’t need them and I smear them with a wet piece of cotton wool.

11) Ha ha! Next, we draw the tablet into rectangles (I chose a size of 85x125 mm) and draw maps (for example, you can take real maps and draw from them, you still won’t get it exactly the same and will have your own author’s interpretation!) First, the most difficult thing - the pictures. We draw with black ink and pen, paint with pencils (or paints, as you prefer). You can use a white pencil to lighten some areas a little (it looks very advantageous on tinted paper). Draw freely and calmly, don’t be shy if you think you’re drawing some kind of nonsense. Believe me, carefully made, even cards will look good with ANY pictures, as long as the king can be distinguished from the queen))) Although in this case there is a letter designation in the corner of the card.

12) In order not to suffer with the second half of the cards, I photographed them and printed them. Next we transfer them to the tablet in a known way: reverse side We shade the pictures with a soft pencil and outline them on top with a pen. The pencil leaves an imprint.

13) To make it even more impressive, draw a golden outline along the edge of the card (with acrylic paint, marker or gel pen). The pencil drawing MUST be fixed with a special aerosol varnish.

14) After the varnish has completely dried, cut off the paper from the tablet.

15) And the sheet turns out perfectly smooth!

16) We pull the tablet again, we need to draw cards with numbers. I am sure that you have never paid attention to how the suit icons are arranged in tens, eights, sixes and other small fry))) We study this issue, draw diagrams for memory.

17) We create a kind of modular grid to help ourselves. Here, by the way, all the peaks are drawn in the same direction and this is an error. One half of the spades should be turned in the opposite direction (crosses and hearts too, but with diamonds it’s all the same, they are symmetrical))).

18) Again we take out black and (mmmmmm!) warm red carmine ink and draw all the digital maps.

19) Next, using a knife and an iron ruler, we separate all the cards from each other. No matter how we measure, they will not turn out perfectly even, do not strive for this.

20) For a card back, you can either draw a picture (then scan and reproduce it) or find a suitable one on the Internet. I found a suitable picture in the patterns on the wallpaper of my kitchen)))

21) We print it on the printer in the amount of 36 pieces (four pieces fit per sheet).

22) Let the size of the shirt be a little larger than the card itself - this way we can better glue the edges. It is convenient to glue with an adhesive stick. But it’s better to take glue from a more expensive brand, so that over time the glue doesn’t dry out and the backs of your cards don’t fly off like autumn leaves. Then we cut off the excess edges with scissors, at the same time rounding the corners of the cards.

23) WE ALWAYS put our cards under the press. Preferably overnight.

This is neither a photoshop tutorial nor a guide to creating a polished, finished map. This is a step-by-step demonstration of my method for creating cities as I make the first sketch.

The main thing is that the city map is logical.

1. Draw the terrain and the most important locations

The city depends on the area. Therefore, the first thing that should be done is to draw the terrain on which the city is located. As an example for the material, I decided to draw a city located on a deeply protruding cape. The coast, except for the bay in the Northeast, is rocky and rugged.

Once you have sketched out the landscape, work from it to locate the main buildings. We place the castle on a hill with an open view of the sea and the surrounding lands. The cliffs flanking the high ground provide a natural line of defense. Any attack from land is only possible down the peninsula. It is clear that the city will first and foremost want to protect the harbor, so the logical thing to do would be to put up a wall that completely seals off the peninsula from the rest of the land.

After I set up the main defenses, I added a port for fishermen (food) and a market near the docks (commerce). I also placed several large buildings - 4,5 and 7, which can be a temple, tavern and wizard's tower, respectively - these are the three most important locations in any fantasy city.

1. Mark main roads

Roads get people where they need to go. In this case, the road should be a fairly direct route from the main gate to the castle. Remember that roads follow the contours of the area. Avoid straight roads in fantasy city maps - these cities are assumed to have no earth-moving equipment, so the roads constantly avoid obstacles. This will help give the city the appearance of a naturally grown settlement.

Once we have laid out the main artery, draw the main roads to the food source and commercial points - these will be the busiest routes. Also add a couple more lines. For example, I drew a road leading to the North-East, to the second gate.

1. Sketch minor roads

A city map with only main roads looks empty. Add a network of small trails to fill the space. Remember that most small roads need to take people to the main roads. Add curves and angles to them to make them look more interesting and, of course, take into account the terrain.

1. Integrate into house map

This may take time. It all depends on the scale of the map and its detail. I drew this sketch on paper about two inches square (5 cm2), so the buildings could be something like dots. So here the buildings are presented in the form of blocks grouped in the space between the roads. Ideally, when you finish drawing the houses, you should be able to see the roads, even if you remove the lines that marked them.

That's it. You have finished your sketch. Add keys to it and it will be complete functional map cities.