Maps For Imagined Worlds
A small studio making strange little maps for strangely big worlds.
Red Quills Tutorials
Red Quills began with a simple idea: worlds feel richer when their maps make sense. What started as Ryan sketching imaginary coastlines for fun slowly grew into a library of tutorials; videos where he breaks down how geography shapes stories, and why the tiniest details make a world feel real.
As more people followed along, writers and game masters began asking for maps of their own. The commissions grew from those conversations: personal, hand-drawn pieces built with the same care he brings to his videos.
The channel is still at the heart of Red Quills — a place for anyone who wants their worlds to feel intentional, grounded, and alive.
Why These Maps?
Red Quills maps aren’t templates or digital brushwork — they’re built the long way. Drawn by hand. Informed by real geography. Designed to help your world make sense.
Each commission begins with your world: its history, its conflicts, its quiet details. From there, geography, culture and story weave together into a map that feels intentional, grounded, and lived-in. These maps are made to be handled, referenced, travelled. Hung on a wall or spread across a table, they hold the practical weight of a tool but the presence of an artwork.
They look like art, but they’re made to be used.
If you want a properly painted map, this is the choice for you. With a sweeping view of your world in full colour, this map is the picture of your story, the one that your readers or players will envision as they enter your world.
Commission your storybook world as an A2 map in hand-drawn style. Using acrylics and ink, Ryan of the Red Quills will make a beautiful mural-style map of your world to really bring it to life with the magic that makes fantasy worlds so fun. Ryan will walk you through the process, create a style and font for the map specific to your aesthetic, and help you to visualise your concepts.
This map is decorated and detailed: focused as much on the writing as the vision. A Worldbuilder Map is a visual combination of information and decoration, so that you can read quotes, lore, and see diagrams on the surface of your world. Perfect as a reference map for your writing desk or studio.
Commission your Worldbuilder Map as an A2 map in hand-drawn style. This map is not only a chart of your world, but a record of your notes, your choices, its history and culture — a combination of artistry and writing. This is perfect for display as the prize of your creativity, showing off what you have made. Ryan of the Red Quills will take you through the process of exploring and charting your world, work with you on the details and wording of your writing, and make something that looks amazing and provides an all-new way of looking at your world.
Want something less black-and-white and more crisp? Something to roll out onto the table and show your players or readers? This weathered map takes the normal fantasy map one step further by bringing the map into the world.
Commission your weathered fantasy map as an A2 map in hand-drawn style. Using careful weathering conditions, a combination of ink and paint, and taking your worldbuilding conditions into account, Ryan of the Red Quills will create a map for you to use as the perfect handout for your tabletop role-playing game. Ryan will create the map to look, feel, and even smell like a part of the world, down to stains, annotations, and illustrations!
This map comes with stylistic and practical information tailored to your world and your role as the Game Master. Political, economic, and cultural details about your fantasy realms, ready for the table. This map is illustrated with several media, so that it looks good while it does the job.
Commission your Game Master Map as an A2 map in hand-drawn style. Using a combination of media, Ryan of the Red Quills will help you to create the definitive outline of your fantasy world from scratch or from a sketch so that you can display it or play it with your friends. Just point Ryan in the direction that you want, and he will make sure to return with something beautiful and useful.
Red Quills Studio
Red Quills began as a habit — filling art books with places that didn’t exist — and quietly grew into a studio dedicated to drawing fictional worlds with depth and honesty. Ryan kept refining the same approach he’s used since he was a kid: patient craft, thoughtful design, and a genuine love for worldbuilding as a discipline.
Red Quills exists because other writers, GMs, and worldbuilders felt that passion too. The demand for commissions didn’t come from selling; it came from people who recognised that these maps weren’t decorative. They were tools, proof that a fictional world can be grounded enough to explore, believable enough to build inside, and beautiful enough to display.
Today, the studio still runs on that same principle: slow, intentional craft. Everything made by hand.
