I've had my eye on this one book for a while now and I was hesitant to pick up
How to Draw Fantasy Art and RPG Maps: Step by Step Cartography for Gamers and Fans by Jared Blando. While I do not have a problem dropping $23 on a book, I was hesitant to do so for an art instruction book without getting my grubby little hands on one to preview first. Amazon has it cheaper, like Amazon does, but....
...OK time to be a little real here. I actually bought this book once from Amazon....and lost it. I never even got to log it in the database where I keep track of such things, and I do not even remember every getting a good look at it then, so a 2nd blind purchase wasn't going to happen....
Anyway, I found a copy at The Hobbit Hobby Shop and decided I'd grab a copy I could actually review and hopefully use, after giving it a quick view. I think some of the contents I could probably find in YouTube tutorials, but I wanted something I could read offline and use for both hand-drawn and digital maps. I'm not that artistic and kind of need some directions......I assume that my own particular style will/would develop over time, but I have to start somewhere.
Over all, a lot of the instructions basically boil down to 3 steps:
- Draw a thing
- Add details
- Final details
Of course this is an oversimplification. There are actually a lot of good deets that I would never think of, like a description of types of pencils and what pencils are good for what. For me the value of the book is really more in these extra details outside of the 3 steps. The whole time I'm looking at these directions for various map aspects I'm thinking how I could apply the directions for hand-drawing to using my drawing tablet and Photoshop.
Wouldn't you know it, later on there is like a two-page discussion on using a computer to draw/paint the maps, but I do not think that went into enough depth. It seems clear to me the author/artist is explaining their processes which are largely hand-drawn.
My only real criticism for this book was that I felt that a lot of the font was undersized. I'm near-sighted and if I'm wondering if I need to put on my glasses, then the font is too small. For a casual read it might not matter, but if I was trying to actually follow along...way too small.
Now this review might be a bit premature because maybe I should draw a few maps before uploading a review. Let's be real here....there are going to be a lot of copies that are never used to make maps, or maybe they're used once before the owner decides to hire an actual artist with talent to create a map....
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