So what would happen if all Earth’s ice melted? For one, the world would be a very different place. Take a look at this map:

Earth without ice (more…)

So, just for fun, I thought I’d chat a little about fantasy map drawing! But before we do, let’s talk about the mapmakers themselves.

In the real world, people who make maps are called cartographers. But since we are talking about fantasy map drawing, why don’t we come up with a fantasy name for this sort of thing.

Let’s start with the word “fantasy.”

Well we all know that fantasy means make-believe and since we are going to draw make-believe things in our maps we’ll use that as our root word. Now let’s add the word “graph.” In this context, graph means map. Put them together and look at the strange word we’ve just made up.

Fantagraph.

See how easy it is to take two perfectly good words and make them completely incomprehensible? But since fantasy means make-believe and graph means map — what we have here is a make-believe map.

Real map

Make believe map

You get the picture?

Now since we all want to learn how to draw fantasy maps, let’s come up with a fantasy name for ourselves. (more…)