This week’s WorldEmber homework challenge will have you collecting more shiny things than a magpie! It’s time to gather image resources for your long worldbuilding sprint. If an image is worth a thousand words, then you’ll be ready to complete WorldEmber by the end of this week’s homework challenge!
WorldEmber Homework Challenge Week 3 – gather and create art assets and maps

WORLDEMBER is coming…
If you tend to grab any old placeholder image, or you find images very inspiring for your worldbuilding, then this is the challenge for you!
The aim of this week’s homework challenge is to collect and upload images and maps to your world, so you have them ready at the drop of a hat. Not only do pictures make your world look nicer, but they’re also very inspiring. A city map, for example, has dozens of potential articles hidden in its buildings, and beneath its streets!
Not only will you be inspiration-hoarding for your long sprint, but you’ll also be prepared to drop images in at the drop of a hat. That means more time writing, and less time lost searching for the perfect image.
Map resources!
There are few things as likely to unlock your worldbuilding brain as maps. If you don’t yet have any maps in your world, it’s worth picking out a few and uploading them to your world. If you run out of inspiration during WorldEmber, a very fruitful way is to have a quick tagging spree, and then create short articles about various areas in the maps. I find that city maps are particularly good for this – make sure you check out our article of resources for city maps if you haven’t yet!
If you want world maps you have a few options. One is to autogenerate a map, which is quick and easy, and maybe enough for what you’re doing. In that case, check out our article on worldmap autogeneration programmes.
If, on the other hand, you want to go it alone, you can make your own maps! Here are the 5 best map making software on the market right now (we think!)
If you want all the skill of an artist with none of the work, check out these premade maps for worldbuilding! The list includes both region maps and battle maps, but make sure you check the usage rights of the artists. Most are fine with you using the maps in your own personal worldbuilding, but it’s worth checking. It goes without saying that if you’re using your world commercially, you should always check permissions with an artist before using their work.
Character images
Character images a super useful – sometimes an image is enough to get you inspired enough to write a whole new article! Here’s a blog post about some helpful resources for character portraits that we’ve found around internet land!
Landscape images
If your world is earthlike then landscape images are no big deal to find. You can find some great resources for Landscape images here which should help you. If you world is VERY alien, and totally unlike earth, then this will be a much harder section for you. I’d recommed finding images wchih can at least represent some of the biomes on your world, so start creating the feeling of what the different areas are like.

Remember you can pick up WorldEmber notebooks, hoodies, Tshirts and mugs from our store!
How to complete WEEK 3 of the WorldEmber Homework Challenge
- Create a list of maps and images which might be useful for your world. If you’ve completed the first WorldEmber homework challenge, you can go through your Pledge and see which images and maps you’ll need for the articles listed there.
- Find and upload the images to your World Anvil world, either as pictures or as maps! Remember to credit the artists!
- Add the images to your pledge document, so you’ll be more inspired when you look at it. You can either do this in a section at the bottom, as a gallery or next to the individual articles!
- Once you’re done, simply write a comment at the bottom of this blog post, and re-copy the URL of your WorldEmber 2020 Pledge Document into the comment!
The next WorldEmber Homework Challenge will be released on Saturday 14th November live on stream! Make sure you’re following the World Anvil Youtube and Twitch channels so you don’t miss it!
Images prepared & maps ready! https://www.worldanvil.com/w/Melior/a/worldember-2020-pledge
Believe it or not I was actually working on that during the stream before this week’s homework was even announced! https://www.worldanvil.com/w/the-bennorian-chronicles-lethann/a/worldember-2020-pledge-document-article
Funny, I’m in the process of upgrading my art system right now, but I’ve managed to gather a small gallery to start. These challenges are great, btw – Here’s what I have so far. https://www.worldanvil.com/w/tamyrh-j-i-rogers/a/worldember-2020-pledge-document-article There will be more art to come.
So here is my pledge once again, but now with a bunch of fresh new images 😀
https://www.worldanvil.com/w/cenorad-sloqush/a/worldember-2020-pledge-document-article
Made a bunch of HeroForge character images over the weekend and made headers with them. Dumped a bunch on the sidebar of my pledge document.
https://www.worldanvil.com/w/world-of-wizard-s-peak-kitoypoy/a/worldember-2020-pledge-document-article?preview=true
I have the bad habit of delaying an article if I don’t have a picture for it (specially species and characters) so I have been working on having these ready since november started. But now they have been added to the pledge as well!
https://www.worldanvil.com/w/simbolos-de-poder-naelin/a/the-worldember-pledge-article
So far I have a few portraits – but art collection is a continual process for me and I will be adding more through the weeks.
https://www.worldanvil.com/w/reovan-tempythecleric/a/worldember-2020-article-1
Have some few images, working on a couple more if time lets me https://www.worldanvil.com/w/iphars-catoblepon/a/worldember-s-pledge-article
I will probably add more images if I manage to find any that I find fitting enough for my article idea’s. But these are what I have added to my pledge so far: https://www.worldanvil.com/w/ealdwyll-rynn19/a/world-ember-2020-pledge-article
I spent too long on this, so there’s not a ton of images yet, but I’m super happy with what I have, especially the portraits, which I almost never manage to find good versions of. https://www.worldanvil.com/w/thaiterra-lady-grayish/a/world-ember-2020-pledge-and-prompts-article
Everything is prepped and ready for WE!!!!
I’ve got a total of 3 worlds to work on this WE:
https://www.worldanvil.com/w/eskAvaEIs-amelianite/a/the-2020-itudean-pledge-article
https://www.worldanvil.com/w/into-the-shadows-amelianite/a/the-2020-pledge-of-howls-article
https://www.worldanvil.com/w/the-demon-origins-amelianite/a/the-2020-dpo-pledge-article
After choosing pics and rearranging my pledge for too long, now I’m satisfied 🙂
https://www.worldanvil.com/w/terraloga-adcheryl/a/before-worldember3A-pledge-article
Maps hand drawn from my homepage. https://www.worldanvil.com/w/shadowfire-ononomad Will add markers as I write all the things 🙂
I will probably add more images as I find them, but this is a start.
https://www.worldanvil.com/w/vanelle-karpsy
https://www.worldanvil.com/w/vanelle-karpsy/a/worldember-2020-pledge
Posted the wrong link, doh!
This wasn’t easy, and I plan to mostly used commissioned art in the future, but I’ve found some images. They’ll mostly be used for inspiration, though 😉
https://www.worldanvil.com/w/fringe-earth-teywiC582C582/a/worldember-2020-pledge-document—fringe-earth-article?preview=true
Ok, maybe I had a little too much fun finding inspiration pictures. All I’m gonna say is I don’t recommend viewing this on mobile. https://www.worldanvil.com/w/kyre-cuttlesquish/a/world-ember-2020-pledge-article?preview=true
Hi, I commented with links on all 3 homework posts, but they’ve disappeared… any reason? Did I do something wrong? Just keen to get involved…
Hello there Ononomad! I do not see any of your comments here – we do not delete comments – just approve for non spam – this is odd. Can you please resubmit them?
Oops, I found them! All should be published now – there were a lot of comments that got lost!
Only a few of my articles need images but I finished a few and am waiting for more releases in Portrait Workshop. Also working in Artbreeder for other images that may or may not appear in my WorldEmber work.
https://www.worldanvil.com/w/isekai/a/worldember-2020
Thanks WorldAnvil. 🙂
Images are kinda hard to come by for my setting, but I gave it the ol’ college try! https://www.worldanvil.com/w/manifold-sky-bcgrwurth/a/worldember-2020-pledge-document-article?preview=true
https://www.worldanvil.com/w/etrea-serukis/a/worldember-2020-pledge-article?preview=true
I had a lot of fun with this homework! https://www.worldanvil.com/w/kaiter-sayshara/a/worldember-2020-pledge-document-document
I finally finished mine! https://www.worldanvil.com/w/the-disputed-lands-urania/a/worldember-pledge-article?preview=true It took a lot longer than I expected but it was fun and I’m really proud of some of the flags.
I don’t have as many ressourses as others, but I have to create the species/races images myself, haha. I’m on it! I had to complete the Varnir first, as I want to use them as a guide for the other articles.
Here is my pledge document so far:
https://www.worldanvil.com/w/foundations-of-the-world-yarik/a/worldember-2020-pledge-document-article?preview=true
(I skipped the fourth homework and integrated the inspiration parts here as well. I know writing a LOT is a great goal but I know that I’ll spend more time brainstorming than writing. Typing speed isn’t that valuable in my case and I better spend the preperation time on the species/people designs :’) Still a cool challenge for everyone who wants to get a lot of words down as fast as possible!)
I found digging up images hard, but I found a few that I feel embody my world!
https://www.worldanvil.com/w/neon-22-luk98/a/pledge-we-2020-article
Continent of Arkana – focus of the first episodes in my story. Created by myself using Wunderdraft. My story is just starting out. So there is very little else in the way of graphics to share at this time. Apologies.
https://www.worldanvil.com/world/8b830845-e1f8-4f29-974b-d23c282107de/summary
Trying again….
The Island Continent
Arkana is the setting of the first phase of our story and the setting for the initial engagements for “Ripples of Reality”. The continent has fertile areas to either coast, plains to the central region, rugged mountains running North/South splitting the continent almost evenly, and an artic region in the far north.
The continent is mostly temperate, with article regions in the far north, arid regions in the central north, and wetlands/temperate rainforest to the southeast. Rivers and lakes are common, but the majority of large settlements in the coastal areas.
Corsair Islands
Islands far off the coasts represent independent groups that either act independently of the sovereigns on the continent, or at best, hold loose associations with them. Often lawless, these groups are dangerous, forcing the more stable islands to form alliances to provide mutual protection from the marauders that would otherwise challenge them.
Other regions exist but are not documented at this time…
https://www.worldanvil.com/w/ripples-of-reality-kdinla/map/ddbf825e-f1ac-446e-ae51-41b94b2b6f04
Done https://www.worldanvil.com/world/article/1eaf86ca-7756-4cc3-89dc-358167d230aa/edit