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Map Creation
Professional map art for your final world concept should be commissioned if you are not a cartographer yourself. I would recommend looking at Fiverr for that. They have a lot of resources for commission projects. The Facebook Group, Fantasy Maps and Worldbuilding is also a great resource for map commissions. That being said, if you are on a budget and just want an idea of your world, here are free map-generators that I have found useful.
Azgarr This generator is excellent for getting the broader world figured out. It generates multiple kingdoms/empires/principalities etc. with borders. It is pretty customizable and you can just keep generating new ones until you find the layout that matches closest to your idea. This generator also has biomes, diplomacy (who hates who and who is allied with who), cultures, religions, populations, rivers, temperature, elevation, significant events (plagues, floods, fault lines, etc.), routes, ports, I could go on. You can download the finished product (or the various individual changes) for free and it comes with a key to tell you what is what.
Inkarnate This website is fantastic if you really want to customize your world and have a clear idea for what you want. Inkarnate as a bit of a learning curve and it can take some practice to get used to. There are paid options, but the free option is still fantastic (high quality but only one length and width option and some missing features). You can design cities, regions, worlds, etc. If you are willing to learn it and know what you want the world to look like, then this is absolutely the tool for you.
Medieval Fantasy City Generator This is an excellent resource for getting a basic idea for a city map. The generator only works on Chrome or on the phone. You can customize it in small ways (add or remove coasts, rivers, temples, walls, etc. make it a large or small city, make it a shanty town). You can change the district names and then toggle a legend. This generator is mostly for getting the ball rolling for inspiration, it’s simple and should only be considered a guide.
Planet Maker If you are a sci-fi author and you want to design a planet, use this tool. You can set the texture of the planet using different things like living mars, terrestrial planet, the moon Enceladus, etc. You can adjust the lighting, how the main star looks, add rings, add moons, change the color and saturation of the planet, adjust the clouds and atmosphere, and a lot more. Seriously, this tool is incredible.
And last but not least: Oskar Stalberg This link is to this guy’s tumblr. He creates a lot of interesting map generator/customizers. You can toy with the layouts of buildings, planets, urban cities, etc. Not as customizable as some of the others, but fun to mess around with and get ideas from.
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1 Reply
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Makayla thank you for this post. Those are great resources. I have even found it very important to have architectural drawings for the buildings I put scenes in. I literally have a two-bedroom house where several scenes take place and found it difficult to describe in the story (and impossible to draw) until I did a web search for architectural plans and found one for a two-bedroom bungalow I could use. For my Writers of the Future winning story, I had to find plans for a theater I could use as a model to make my descriptions of character interaction and movement more concrete. So yes, I am a huge fan of maps, plans and drawings.
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