I recently bought Wonderdraft: a map creation mostly targeted at the Dungeons & Dragons crowd, but flexible and extensible enough to draw modern maps too. Thought folk here might be interested.
A particularly useful feature (especially for drawing inexperts, like myself) is the ability to import an image as an overlay, or guide; it’s a bit like using tracing paper – do kids still do that? I’ve been using this feature in combination with images taken fromThe Writers’ Map to train my map-making skills.
And, of course, it’s a great displacement activity when you should be writing.
Wow, that looks amazing. I tried randomly generating continents and islands using a photoshop technique, adapted to Pixelmator (which is a very nice tool, btw), but I ended up generating something that was just kind of “meh”.
It looks pretty easy (relative to from-scratch PS/Pixelmator techniques). What do you think about it relative to more general-purpose drawing/touch-up tools?
Given that my map-making and graphic tools kills are terrible, I’m probably not the best qualified to provide a useful answer. I did find I could make passable maps in a few hours, though – passable to me, that is For the skills I don’t have – mainly shading and creating appropriate colours – there are plenty of examples to learn from. That said, for publishing or as a writing guide, black and white should be sufficient, and there are themes and plenty of uncoloured (or colourable) assets to do that.
For me, this has made map-making fun and, frankly, achievable. I don’t have the skills, nor motivation, to make them the proper way.
Well, it says it needs (bare minimum) an Intel HD Graphics 5000. The NVIDIA is recommended though.
But now that I look at my old MB Air (2013 model), I’ve got a IHD Graphics 4000, so it might not run on mine either. I’m not in the market for a new computer (though I actually do want the latest model air). Without a trial version to test on my machine, I guess it’ll have to wait a couple more years before I can buy with the confidence that it will run properly on whatever computer I end up with.
I bought mine mostly for writing. I was considering an iPad+keyboard combo, but the MBA is perfect – just the 8/128 base model (which I got for 1,000 + change). I sync everything via iCloud (which iOS Scriv doesn’t [yet] do) including Scriv’s preferences. So, I move between macOS machines, and everything just works.
For the skills I don’t have – mainly shading and creating appropriate colours – there are plenty of examples to learn from. That said, for publishing or as a writing guide, black and white should be sufficient, and there are themes and plenty of uncoloured (or colourable) assets to do that.
I’m not in the market for a new computer (though I actually do want the latest model air). Without a trial version to test on my machine, I guess it’ll have to wait a couple more years before I can buy with the confidence that it will run properly on whatever computer I end up with.