Gentleman and the occassional Lady,

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to produce a good looking Hive Map. A significant portion of my campaign is going to take place in a Hive and Id like to be able to provide my players with more than circles on a paper with my chicken scratch in them. I am working on my artistic abilities but they are no where near up to snuff. I'm not really worried about format at this point so feel free to offer up literally any idea you have. Digtial, analog, anything and on any scale. Thanks in advance for the assistance.

Well, I for my part sometimes use satellite pictures from cities. Especially those with huge old buildings like the forbidden city in peking are quite usable. Then I take out all color so I have a nice black and white image and start circling certain areas as points of interest.

If it is about the artistic, you can heighten the quality of a handout by simply putting a nice picture into the background. This even works if the complete "map" is just schematics (circles or boxes with names to it, perhaps linked by lines and arrows).

The one below is an example with artwork " bought & paid for" (well, for the license to use it in private and/or commercial projects, without any right of selling it etc.). As you can see, it looks nice, even so it IS just "squares and names" (in that case, a delve down into the bowels of the hive. The picture contains the schematics of the route).

Most word text documents or table calcualtion (even the free ones like libro or openoffice) have an option that allows to insert a file from the picture as "background".

...and if you really want to increase "artistic skill" for map making, try "this tutorial" from "that Dyson guy"

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2011/04/24/a-dyson-mapping-1-2-3-tutorial/

The technics and "tricks" he explains there work for a "from above" view as much as the work for "side view".

If you are looking for graphic tools, there are some download-products "in the internet" that are made-for-rpg mapping tools.
Most want some money for their products, so.

As stated above, one can always grab a satelite picture and start photoshopping

WhiteWolf had some ready-to-drop/free to download city grids as "add on" to "city source book" they had sold fo their vampire-game-line. The link below goes to the free download version of "just this maps" (the book was about "everything else", largely). So, if you just declare that this street grid is not a city but a hive section...well

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/50756/Damnation-City-District-Map-Segments?cPath=1_135

My reply is over in the like-named thread in the DH1 forum: https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/191862-hive-mapping-question/#entry1860532

Awesome thanks guys

Gregorius, I just downloaded those maps you linked and they are Friggin awesome. Thanks for the tip.