Cartography - Blog Posts

✥ | a map of ru’aun, circa 1416 a.i. (after irene)

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hi!! it’s me again!! today i bring you a little teaser for my mcd roleplay that’s gonna be coming up either this or next year!!

i’m really excited for it, and the guys in the mcd big bang server have really inspired me to keep on crafting. more updates about this will come soon if you guys are interested in hearing more!!

(under the cut is a little tidbit about roleplay locations)

every city in red is going to be an area/setting you can actually roleplay in!! it’s not concrete, and could change—but this is what i’m thinking. key below <3

circle with diamond — ‘capital’ of the phoenix drop alliance

circle with dot — major cities

circle — minor cities

diamond — settlement/village

animal footprint/marking — high concentration of that region’s nonhuman species

Map-in-progress I'm making for friends research of chemical levels in Texas coastal bays and estuaries.

First map of Antharis!

@hebidoka helped

Peta Gunatanah Malaysia 2014 - 2018

Peta Gunatanah Malaysia 2014 -2018 ("Malaysia's Land Cover 2014 - 2018") web application is a platform generated for the Quality Assessment activity organized by Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM) on 23rd June 2024.

The workshop aims to collect field/reference data from Malaysian's state agencies in the effort to verify the quality of the land cover classification output generated in support of CO2 release measurement from converted agricultural lands.

Participants are able access the app via conventional browsers from their mobile devices and submit drawings/sketches that they have captured within interactive data layers.

This web app aims to support direct input from source onto the task of improving the accuracy of the generated land cover maps. Vectors generated from this exercise are readily standardized with the required data scheme from quality assessment, making full use of the ArcGIS Online ecosystem full to a produce concrete output and actionable information.

With this, I am commencing my submission for the #30DayMapChallenge for 2023 🗺

The categories outlined is similar to that of last year but I am never going to hate this repetition. How can I? It's a basics of making maps and there's so much to learn from the single-word theme.

Any aspiring map-makers out there? Let's share our maps for this wonderful month of November under the #30DayMapChallenge 2023!

Malaysia Bid Round 2023 (MBR 2023)

Tool: ArcGIS Pro 2.6.3 Technique: Symbolization, labeling and SQL expression

MBR 2023 is a peak event that culminates all the effort of data collection and stock take of hydrocarbon resource in the Malaysia. It is an annual event that put together all the exploration blocks, discoverable hydrocarbon fields and late life assets for upstream sectors to evaluate and invest in.

Leading up to the event, the Malaysia Petroleum Management (MPM) updates, re-evaluate and produces maps; static and digital, to cater to the need for the most update stock-take of information that can be gained from various source of exploration output; seismic, full tensor gradiometry, assets; cables, pipelines, platforms, as well as discoverable resources. This year's them aims to include various prospects and initiative to align the industry itself with lower carbon emission and to explore the option for carbon capture storage (CCS) attempts in the popular basins such as the Malay and Penyu Basin. This is a big follow-up with the closing of MBR 2022 with the PSC signing for 9 blocks a few days earlier.

Credit: Sh Shahira Wafa Syed Khairulmunir Wafa

Over ~70 maps for unique blocks have been produced during the finalization stage, ~210 maps during data evaluation and additional 20 for the event. And this excludes the standardized maps to formalize information requested by prospective bidders as well as clients who are facing prospects of extending their contract.

The standardization of the map requires the optimization of workflow and standard templates to cater to rapid changes and exporting to rapid output.

For more information on the event, please access the following resources:

PETRONAS: Malaysia Bid Round

PETRONAS myPROdata

The Malaysian Reserve: Petronas offers 10 exploration blocks in MBR 2023

Uninspired

I am a reckless uninspired person. I call myself a map-maker but I don't really get to make maps for reasons that I don't think I should venture outside of my requesters' requests. But mostly, I am compelled to get it right and I feel good if I can deliver what they need. The thing is, I no longer get spontaneously inspired to make maps anymore. Just as the rules become clearer the more you read books on cartography, fear just crop themselves up like 'Plant vs Zombies' 🌱 in PlayStation.

So, I am scared that I'm beginning to wear off my excitement about making map; really making them and not just knowing how to make them.

What sort of idea is great? I mean, what should I focus on trying to make? There are so many data out there that what I will attempt may be missing the train or just pale in comparison to other incredible work. I don't really mind it but I'm not that young to not understand self-esteem does ease the thinking process.

Can't say much, I mean...30 Days of Map Challenge hasn't been all that well with me. I should've prepared something before the event event started. I quit after the 3rd challenge cause I overthink and get panic attacks every time I feel I'm doing stuff half-ass.

Despite all that, I am lucky to have aggressively supportive siblings. They just can't seem to stop the tough love and always kicking me to just barf something out.

'It's the process that matters!'

When did I start forgetting how wonderful the process, huh?

[2022] 30 Day Map Challenge -- FAILED

Last year, I participated once again in the 30 Day Map Challenge that was going around in Twitter-ville come November. It is the 3rd attempt at the marathon and 2022 served as a reminder that progressed too despite getting stuck at Day 3 as life caught up with me.

I don't like the idea that I have left the challenge incomplete, again. It was not my priority and I work better with clear goals or visions of expected output. If it does not add to my need to learn something new ...it will be a task bound to head straight to the backburner. Let's resolve to make it a long-term routine instead of a spurt of stress trying to make the deadline.

As a consequence, I am attuning this task into one that actually gives me the benefit out putting into record the techniques and tools I used to make the maps in writing. I believe that will serve more purpose and added value other than visuals. And perhaps, have some stock ready for submission this year instead.

Anyone else participated in this challenge back in November? How did you do and what would you like to do better for the next one? Don't be shy and do drop a word or two.

📚 Nature in the Heart of Borneo (2020)

Tool: ArcGIS Pro 2.6.1

Technique: Annotation, Labeling and Symbology

A series of maps were created for the book published by WWF-Malaysia and FORMADAT (Forum Masyarakat Adat Dataran Tinggi Borneo) back in 2020 called Nature in the Heart of Borneo.

This book was meant as a guide to some of the natural attractions at Northern parts of Sarawak. If it was clear, Northern Sarawak is where the we have our very own highlanders which consist of primarily the Lundayeh/Lun Bawang, Sa'ban and Kelabit people. Some of the beautiful settlements up in the north that should not be missed are Ba'kelalan and Long Semadoh. They have beautiful homestays and even more beautiful landscapes with trekking activities lined up for tourists. And this is the culmination of ardent passion by my two absolutely wonderful colleagues, Alicia Ng and Cynthia Chin.

Most part of the maps were made using readily available basemap provided by Esri in their Living Atlas. But in entirety, many of the features and details are drawn manually within ArcGIS Pro. Like many other mapmakers out there, the labeling feature is horrendously temperamental and I either end up using annotations instead.

In summary, technically, there are 2 lessons learned here:

1️⃣ Establish concept or pick an idea before you start drawing

A concept of the map and palette should be established at the earliest stage possible. And don't just throw the task of making maps and split them evenly between cartographers. They won't have similar ideas or similar interpretations of the concept. It'll only give you double the pain of creating the maps again from scratch.

2️⃣ Omit borders

If you're making maps for books, don't border trying to make borders and fully utilize the whole layout. In the end, you'll need to export out your maps and they will resize it anyway and it'll compromise the maps you created. As if it wasn't graining enough in the first place, it'll look absolutely microscopic by the time they're done.

🗻 Diorama Drama

So, John Nelson made this absolutely simple tutorial on how to create a diorama interesting features on Earth's surfaces. I have been eyeing alot of people making them and resisting the urge to make one. I mean, I have the habit of falling into a rabbit hole with making maps that I'll definitely be having too much fun to stop. That could mean hours and hours scrutinizing colors, perspective or setups and even legend arrangements. But this...I decided not to overdo it and just make one.

I can't believe how easy it is to make one! Here's a piece of many to come; the elevation diorama of area within the Batang Ai Dam and Batang Ai National Park in Sarawak, East Malaysia.

What you'll learn... 1️⃣ How to extract raster from existing image layer in Living Atlas; that's how we extracted the DEM layer for this elevation data.

2️⃣ How to create a 3D scene in ArcGIS Pro and navigate through them.

3️⃣ How to create a layout layer and export them as a static image format i.e jpeg, png, tif etc...

Check out the video tutorial here 👇🏻

I was thinking that this tutorial is making me feel like there is a possibility of creating some floating island or pixel-like models of isolated pieces of land -- my head is imagining some kind of dragons flying around in some nonexistent Viking fantasy map. But hey...if you're not inspired to create crazier maps from John's tutorial, then are you even a cartographer at all?

He's on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and he even has this supercool blog of his; Adventures in Mapping, where he shares all of his tutorials in full documentation and gorgeous portfolio that could only consist of magic! One such as I can only aspire.

So, that was what our Sunday looked like and I think I'll be playing around with dioramas for a few weeks. Let's see just how many of these I can make 'til the next Sunday.

There is a moment where base maps just couldn't or wouldn't cut it. And DEMs are not helping. The beautiful hillshade raster generated from the hillshade tool can't help it if the DEM isn't as crisp as you would want it to be. And to think that I've been hiding into hermitage to learn how to 'soften' and cook visual 'occlusion' to make maps look seamlessly smooth. Cartographers are the MUAs of the satellite image community. 

I have always loved monochromatic maps where the visual is clean, the colors not harsh and easy for me to read. There was not much gig lately at work where map-making is concerned. The last one was back in April for some of our new strategy plans. So, when my pal wanted me to just 'edit' some maps she wanted to use, I can't stop myself with just changing the base map. 

The result isn't as much as I'd like it to be but then, we are catering the population that actually uses this map. Inspired by the beautiful map produced by John M Nelson that he graciously presented at 2019 NACIS; An Absurdly Tall Hiking Map of the Appalachian Trail. What I found is absurd is how little views this presentation have. The simplicity of the map is personally spot-on for me. Similar to Daniel P. Huffman as he confessed in his NACIS 2018 talk; Mapping in Monochrome, I am in favor of monochromatic color scheme. I absolutely loathe chaotic map that looked like my niece's unicorn just barf the 70s color deco all across the screen. Maybe for practical purposes of differentiating values of an attribute is deemed justifiable but surely...we can do better than clashing orange, purple and green together, no? 

So...a request to change some labels turn into a full-on make over. There are some things that I realized while making this map using ArcGIS Pro that I believe any ArcGIS Pro noob should know:

Sizing your symbols in Symbology should ideally be done in the Layout view. Trust me. It'll save you alot of time. 

When making outlines of anything at all, consider using a tone or two lighter than the darkest of colors and make the line thinner than 1 pt. 

Halo do matter for your labels or any textual elements of your map.

Sometimes, making borders for your map is justifiable goose chase. You don't particularly need it. Especially if the map is something you are going to compact together with articles or to be apart of a book etc. 

Using blue all the way might have been something I preferred but they have the different zonations for the rivers, so that plan went out the window. 

And speaking of window...the window for improvement in this map is as big as US and Europe combined. 

somehow, it looks like a beautiful world, all those thin landforms surrounded by sea

map of the world where the countries are weighted by speakers of the brahui language...

Maps for Bay of Quinte Tourism Illustration by Jeannie Phan

Cover illustration and supporting maps for regional hot spots for farmer’s  markets, food trucks, and overall landmarks for the Bay of Quinte.

Find me around - instagram / twitter / prints

I have gathered a pile of the assets I have made for making D&D maps. They are all PNGs and there are castles, towns, ruins, villages, mountains, trees, forests and hills. They should work VTTs and similar programs. Q: Why do this? A: So other people can use these assets to make their OWN maps. So yeah, I'm giving them away for free. Feel free to test them out!

GOOGLE DRIVE FOLDER OF THE FREE D&D MAP ASSETS.

I have made an example map here, using photoshop. But if you want to change parts of the assets, crop them or color them and you don't have access to any art programs, I recommend using Photopea It is a browser-based version of something very akin to photoshop.

If you end up using these free assets, please do let me know and tag me so I can see what you have made.

I have gathered a pile of the assets I have made for making D&D maps. They are all PNGs and there are castles, towns, ruins, villages, mountains, trees, forests and hills. They should work VTTs and similar programs. Q: Why do this? A: So other people can use these assets to make their OWN maps. So yeah, I'm giving them away for free. Feel free to test them out!

GOOGLE DRIVE FOLDER OF THE FREE D&D MAP ASSETS.

I have made an example map here, using photoshop. But if you want to change parts of the assets, crop them or color them and you don't have access to any art programs, I recommend using Photopea It is a browser-based version of something very akin to photoshop.

If you end up using these free assets, please do let me know and tag me so I can see what you have made.

I just realized! I never uploaded any of my D&D maps here? I should do that. This one is from the game I run with my lovely 7-person group. The time of the Great Cities is over and The Magor Valley is now dominated by goblin tribes. If only someone could do something about it.

I just realized! I never uploaded any of my D&D maps here? I should do that. This one is from the game I run with my lovely 7-person group. The time of the Great Cities is over and The Magor Valley is now dominated by goblin tribes. If only someone could do something about it.

A tutorial on a (bit cheating) way of creating fictional maps.

Open your editing software (RECOMMENDING Krita, since it's free and it's very good).

Step 1: Google "X country silhouette" and copy it.

Paste it onto the canvas.

Step 2: Separate the silhouette from the background you copied with it! You can do that by using magic wand selection tool or by making a gradient map with black on 49,9% and transparent on 50% on the slider.

Step 3: Repeat several times with numerous countries and/or islands, cities, municipalities, communes, continents et cetera.

Step 4: Combine, mesh, stretch, rotate, mirror - go ham, make it work.

Step 5: Erase and add.

Step 6: Have your map outline ready, copy/paste it several times in the same doc on different layers and edit in different ways like biomes, kingdoms, mountains and other.

Step Mountains+: To figure out mountains, make another layer on the doc and do something like this:

-and then in every polygon you add an arrow.

Where arrows meet or transfer onto continents, add mountains.

Color the sea with a couple layers of depth and you're done :D

Cartographic Practices in Arda: Hobbits

[overthinking fantasy cartography series: Elves, Orcs, Dwarves, Hobbits, and Men]

o   We know Sam isn’t much for geography - “maps conveyed nothing to Sam’s mind” - but Frodo studied Elrond’s maps in Rivendell, as did Merry, and both made sense of them; so if hobbits do use maps, they may use similar techniques or representation practices to the Elves, and their maps would be mutually intelligible

o   Hobbits do not seem to travel much beyond the Shire, nor need to know much outside its borders. Merry and Pippin, however, who do travel quite a lot back to the south in the Fourth Age, could expand hobbit cartography and place the Shire within a broader political and geographic context. Whether this knowledge is spread among the hobbits more generally, hard to say

The sparse and stylized map given in The Hobbit might be a fair in-world depiction of the limits of hobbits’ grasp of geography, gained through rare instances like Bilbo’s travels

If Merry and Pippin do contribute to updated maps (Merry more likely than Pippin, I imagine), they might well incorporate mapping practices, place names, and territorial divisions according to the realms they serve (so, situating the Shire as an autonomous region within the reunited Arnor-Gondor realm, and adopting Men’s cartographic practices)

Such maps would be more useful to outsiders adding the Shire into their spatial conception of Middle-earth; I doubt they would be much used in the Shire itself

o   Hobbit cartography would relate to land use primarily, I think, mostly agriculture; towns and land tenure would also be noted, since their class structure seems based on land ownership (even though the mechanisms of land acquisition or means of wealth accumulation are murky - they aren’t feudal lords; they aren’t collecting tribute from workers, but plainly there *are* workers and landed gentry, so ??? how did that develop??)

Though, if property arrangements are fairly stable and inherited, and everyone knows which hobbits belong where, is it even necessary to make formal maps of this? Might not customary boundaries just be common knowledge and maybe marked on the ground itself, but hobbits wouldn’t need maps for it?

If they did make physical maps, there would probably be notations for social establishments – taverns, inns, etc. Beyond the borders of the shire, Bree might be the last place actually marked. Again, though, these are the kinds of spatial relations I think would be negotiated in real time through spatial practice, but not recorded cartographically

I suppose given the Sackville-Baggins’s coveting of Bag End, property disputes may be a thing, and being able to assert recorded land claims might be useful - so records of property ownership might be cartographically relevant

o   Beyond such record-keeping, though, I think hobbits wouldn’t really need or make maps unless engaging with outsiders – they know their territory, they understand the rules of ~property ownership~ (historically inexplicable as it is to me) and whatever implicit spatial boundaries or sites of importance exist across the Shire. There might be casually-made “maps” for basic wayfinding if one had to travel to a distant village, but I doubt anyone’s making the type of formal or standardized maps for territorial governance that might be used by a more established state and military - which the Shire lacks, of course (and good for them)

Cartographic Practices of Arda: Men

[overthinking fantasy cartography series: Elves, Orcs, Dwarves, Hobbits, and Men]

o   Men might seem like the most straightforward group to analyze, but they’re not. Why should we assume that humans in Arda use the same cartographic practices that we do? For that matter, who is “we”? Cartography is not a set of objective and universally or historically standard techniques; it is not an exact science; the modern maps treated as real or correct maps are not the one true way to represent space. Tolkien’s Edain may be based on Western Europeans, but they’re still fantasy, and there’s no reason that their cartography should look like Western Europe’s

Further, Western European cartography wasn’t standardized in terms of techniques or even units of measure until early states began to want visual representations of their territory that would make them more easily taxed and managed, especially as enclosure policies took off, market forces became increasingly dominant, and controlling a standardized populace became an important goal of government

o    Western cartography is also deeply intertwined with maps as a colonial and imperialist tool, which impacted the development of mapping practices, the lands those maps reflected, and the ways in which space was imagined. I think that governing, planning military operations, maybe taxing the populace, and carrying out various expansionist programs would be the activities in Middle-earth driving cartographic development among Men, similar to Europe, but it’s not inevitable at all that the maps they make for such things would look the same. Maybe they could make maps of layered symbols rather than mimicking on-the-ground spatial relations, or paintings whose details correspond to geographic referents, or physical models of space a la Polynesian stick charts (although I do think there’s an artifacts-have-politics argument to be made about which cartographic practices are most conducive to certain uses and conceptions of space, but I digress)

o   But presuming Men do make maps in the same vein as those found in the books (though I should say I don’t take those as being real in-world maps, per se), what would they map? And how would they map it?

Starting with the Edain and the kingdoms they founded, since their influence is so centered in LOTR, I think their cartography would develop as a formal practice in Númenor, and prior to that, they might use the maps of Elven realms of which they were vassals, or might create their own spatial navigation techniques, not necessarily cartographic

Likely, considerable influence of Elvish cartography on Númenórean maps would carry over to Gondor and Arnor. While Elves might only need maps as reference for memorization, or for military strategy planning, I think Men’s reproduction of and reliance on maps would increase greatly, especially during the colonial age of Númenor and the realms they established. Cartography could become a more established discipline; populations could be managed more effectively, at least under the more competent rulers; similar to early-state-formation Europe, you could see cartography as an increasingly important tool of state 

(this is a long one, so the rest is under the cut)

Keep reading

Intact book with chart attached

1854

Available

Partial world war map find lithographed in NY by Esso Marketers.

MAPPING REVACHOL (2.0)

Back in July of 2024, I was incredibly inspired by the project Mapping Revachol by Map Max and wanted to continue on with an attempt of my own. The canon map we're given felt out of date and more than a little incongruous with what we're told in-game, and being both an avid fanfic writer and compulsive visualizer, I really wanted to be able to see Revachol in my mind's eyes.

So, taking inspiration from both Map Max's attempt, as well as meticulously combing through in-game dialogue (with the help of my intrepid friend and far more meticulous researcher than I, @spine-y) we scoured Fayde for any and all directional references to the different districts of Jamrock, East and West Revachol, and everything that lay beyond. (Shoutout to the MoralIntern questline, that one came in clutch).

I took a few liberties with district placement, especially because the wiki also seems to contradict a few things we're told in the game. You may not agree with my choices, and I'm open to suggestions! I may not make any changes anytime soon because this took forever, but I also welcome any other attempts to map Revachol!

(The red line that cuts through Central Jamrock and Faubourg is Boogie Street!)

Included below is my initial sketch before I realized that doing this in markers and microns would actually be the death of me, and then some of the early screenshots of trying to figure out what the hell the 8-81 would actually look like and how to make it make sense.

Does it make perfect sense? No! I'm not a cartographer; I'm a fanartist. I'd much rather draw men dicking each other down nasty style. But this was an incredibly fun project that only took me... only six months to complete.

I hope you enjoy!

--

I NEED YOU.  YOU CAN KEEP ME ON THIS EARTH. BE VIGILANT. I LOVE YOU.

My friend’s wedding invite. It’s printed A3, and folds into a little A5 map. What a fun brief! 

6 spots we love in..Chai Wan

Go pick up a copy of Time Out Hong Kong while you can, or check out the link above to read more about Chai Wan! 

Seven spots we love on... Level 3 of Sha Tin Plaza | Time Out Hong Kong