On maps and tools

I'm not super thrilled with my efforts to redo "zoomed" versions of areas of my setting in Inkarnate. It's just not working as well as I'd hoped. I can, it turns out, "crop" portions of a map, but then the work involved in changing the scale and other things is a bit prohibitive; it's not as fun as just making a map from scratch. And doing the latter tends to not look enough like the original. I find myself quickly getting drawn back into my old hand-drawn roots again. Especially since all of the art supplies that I ordered have arrived. Even all of the extraneous dice and fantasy coins I've ordered have arrived. I've got it all.

And while the Inkarnate stuff was fun—it kinda reminded me of making maps with the old Heroes of Might and Magic III editor, to be honest with you, which I spent many hours doing many years ago—I've been drawing maps by hand too long to stop doing so now. It was a fun different way of doing things, and I like the results a lot, but from a psychological standpoint, it could never replace my hand drawn style, only supplement it. Maybe I'd do digital maps, if I had an expensive tablet and software to use it. But even then, probably not. I've been doing the hand drawn thing since I was a kid, and it still looks more like the kinds of maps that I grew up with. While the Inkarnate maps undoubtably look better; they're in full color, high resolution, the art stamps are great, etc. it somehow just feels a little bit sterile to me. And while I'm pleased with the things Inkarnate allows me to do that hand-drawing does not (color, consistent fonts, some features that I wouldn't have ever thought to draw, more detail on the features I do draw sometimes, etc.) I'm equally frustrated by the things that I can't do. Why can't I have a straight cliff? Because the system only includes curved ones. Etc. It's a little bit like the difference between playing a table top RPG with a live GM vs playing a computer RPG with pre-programed stories and just a handful of customization options, relatively speaking.

Anyway, when I was a kid, my maps were by default done with school supplies, because that's what I had available. Graph paper, sometimes, or typing paper sometimes, but all too often simply regular lined paper that we wrote on, with cheapo #2 pencils and cheapo ballpoint pens. Although at various times I had various art supplies; colored pencils, pastel chalks, watercolors, acrylic paints, oil paints—even India ink at one point—my experiments with using them on maps never really panned out, and I never really preferred the look of them. Felt-tipped pens I liked better, although they soaked through the paper sometimes, and occasionally smudged. Now, granted—I don't go around drawing a new map every week or anything like that. I did plenty of sketches for Dark•Heritage over the years, but I only ever made a couple of maps that I considered fairly "well done." Dark•Heritage Mk. IV was by far the most ambitious map I'd drawn in years. Maybe even decades. Although I'd had several drafts and sources and whatnot that got me there. But those were only ever drawn as sketches, for me to block out locations; not to use as a game tool or to show to players, etc. My Inkarnate Dark•Heritage Mk. V map I only consider less ambitious because the tool made it really easy and fast compared to what I'm used to doing. I'll probably yet get around to doing a hand-drawn alterate version of the setting, with slightly distorted geography because I won't be able to replicate the shapes and locations exactly, just more or less relatively. And any zoomed-in regional maps will also be hand-drawn. 

For a long time, I actually refused to use art tools. Because I had done it with el cheapo school supplies when I was a kid, and not been happy with my brief experiments into art supplies, I actually thought it a point of foolish pride that I wouldn't use them. And as office supplies because more readily available; i.e., nicer pens like the gel pens that I'd been using recently, as well as everyone having access to printer paper pretty much all of the time, it seemed an obvious way to proceed.

The reality, though, is that better art supplies were hardly difficult or expensive to get either. My Strathmore sketch pads, which I have in two sizes; 9x11 and 11x14, cost maybe ten bucks each? Maybe less, a little. As near as I can tell, the Micron Pigma art pens are a relatively new development; the ink is high quality, doesn't smudge, etc. and the numbered tip thicknesses are a nice touch. But, again, that only cost me ~$10-15 for a set of eight pens? Considering that the points are quite a bit finer and allow for much better detail than my gel pens, it was probably silly that I held out for as long as I did without getting them. And I guess that's ultimately what I'm getting at here; even if you want better tools (and accordingly, better results) than I was getting with the cheapest of cheap school supplies back in the 80s—and you probably do, although I was plenty happy with my results back then—it's hardly difficult or expensive to do so. For about ~$20-25 and a trip to most regular stores that have even a craft section (Walmart probably stocks most of this stuff; an actual arts/crafts store like Michael's would be even better, of course) you're in business.

I did some trials with the Micron pens, just to see how they drew. I think for most purposes, the difference between the various tips is overkill. I could have done with a set of two; the 005 ultra fine or 01 tip, and the 08 "regular" tip. Maybe the brush pen or even just my old gel pens for the thicker lines like coasts and black fills and whatnot. I'll probably use them all because I have them all, but y'know. I even saw sets of three 005s; if I could go back and do it again, instead of getting the set of eight with all of the tips, I'd have just bought that, used the gel pen for most normal line work, and the ultra fine point for more detailed stuff around it.

Oh, and so I'm not just talking about pens and my philosophy towards them, here's another minor detail. I had said earlier when talking about my old DH4 map that I had adopted some kind of hatching to give texture and the vague sense of rolling elevation without being too specific, which I thought worked well, but I couldn't remember where I got the idea or what inspired me to try it. I found it when I re-looked at the Third Edition Eberron map, which used it extensively too. I didn't love much of anything else about the art style of that map. Or rather, it was fine, I suppose, but it had little that I would have tried to use myself. Except that one thing.

Curiously, it's on their legend, marked as "Hills/Lowland." Which is it; hills, or lowland? I think again the idea that it's vaguely representational of rollling topographical relief. It's not flat, but it's not a big enough deal that you'd mark it as actual hills or something, is how I read it and interpret it.