Wow we just passed 100 patrons, thank you everyone who have choose to support me in doing this, you just made me one happy mapper!!

This means that from now on what used to be my hobby, to map the world of Greyhawk is now something I can devote time to on a regular basis, at least a day a week and often more, and my work days tend to be 10 or even 12 hour especially when I'm working on things I'm passionate about 🙂

Currently I'm working on the re-editing of the Flanaess terrain, which is about a third done. Color and brightness adjustment are done on a global and regional level, things like the overly blue oceans, the over the top greenery of most things green. So now the lands have a much more natural general look.

Next step will be to work on the wet parts of the map, starting with the ocean (and big lake) depths to try and convey depth information in a way that is subtle, realistic but still informative. The its time to work on the shallow waters, things like coral reefs, beaches, coastal marshlands etc, both salty and fresh.  The final wet parts to to go over are the rivers and inland wetlands.

The final bit is to adjust details here and there. Try and fix some of the"ugly bits" that have been irritating me for a long time. Things like artifacts from the stitching together of the tiny bits of terrain that came out of Bryce, and valleys that should have a bit more erosion.

Heraldry is another part of fantasy mapping I love to do, and there are a few shields that needs a work over, and I have some new ones in the making as well. The new ones are from Dungeon and Dragon magazine and are from the World of Greyhawk so they deserve to be part of the effort.

I also need to do more videos! My series of the basics of World Machine have one left, how to export stuff. Then there are some advanced WM stuff to cover and a whole new series on terrain editing in Photoshop.

There are a lot of software development in the area of terrain generation and cartography, both in general and directly related to fantasy and role playing. This is something I'm very interested in and I intend to write about and review what I see as interesting.

I wrote a couple of blog posts about this a few years ago, time to pick up that thread and look back and see how wrong I was and continue the series with additional writing.

The new generation of Greyhawk (or Oerth even) Cartography is not forgotten, it is in the concept phase and will be presented in various posts this year.

I'm a little hesitant to actually start mapping until I have had a chance to test out the new tool Gaea in its release form, coming this summer. I've been tinkering with the beta for some time, but it is still missing, some for me, key features. Once these features are at least in beta its time to start the actual mapping. 

This means a bit more time on projections and determining where on Oerth Flanaess is and a bit more about its surroundings. If there are more time over there are things like historic maps, trade, economy and other things we can give some love to as well.

The money from my Patreon will in the next few months go to my GIS fund, to give me the resources to get a set of professional GIS tools. With them and some time to learn how to use them will evolve my cartography to a whole new level, especially the presentation and usability of my the material I'm producing. Over time it will also speed up things.

There are two areas I want to improve over the next few years, presentation and small scale mapping. On the presentation side of things I want to improve my web based maps and the use of game engines. With Small Scale Mapping I mean things like city mapping, encounter maps and dungeon maps.    

Some of my dream projects that are on my list to map before I die are, the City of Greyhawk, the Underdark and iconic places of the Planes. Each of them are an enormous challenge to do right and make them both useful in your gaming and show them off in a way that show their true character.

This is what I strive for and thanks to you guys I'm in a position to do this, thank all so much!!!