I love it :0
can you provide some info on the process of making it? I've always loved cartography type stuff like this but find my own attempts to mimic have always fallen way short.
Or was it just a matter of being very patient and free-handing all the contours?
Xion, glad you like it
And yes, it was all done freehand. All the elevation lines, text, trade routes and map symbols were all crafted by yours truly.
I saved out some WIPs to show the process on this bad boy:
This was made waaaaaay back in like, January, while Amanitazest's writing challenge was going on. I had taken stock of all the areas and geography that I had conceptualized and started trying to make sense of where things would be located based on the interactions I wrote about etc etc. Pretty rough, but it gave me a base to go on.
Now, 8 months or so later, I finally got around to making a proper version. First thing I did was work on the shorelines as those would define the look of the entire region the game would be set in. I knew roughly what kinds of terrain would be needed for each area, and just went to town. I then filled in some of the more open bodies of water with some islands for some visual flair. Assuming they would have either been chunks that had broken off the mainland, or formed by natural ridges in the water, I tried to match them up like puzzle pieces.
In terms of technical tricks used to achieve the map effect, I then placed a stained paper texture behind and set the shores to
"Color Burn" and down to about 80% opacity. This allowed for the texture to bleed through, as if the lines were drawn in ink. Same goes for the elevation lines: Color Burn, set to about 60% opacity this time. I looked at a lot of old maps to try and understand how elevation is illustrated, and just went about drawing it in where I thought it would make sense based on the area/landmark/town etc.
I then went about prettying up the names and such. Each one was written by hand. I wanted it to feel like an authentic map that might be drawn by the cartographers of Tyr. Last, I made symbols to represent the different types of cities (Village, Town, Capital) as well as important landmarks.
Finally, I took all of that and added some more details to make it like the map you see in the previous post. A compass, emblem, technical writing, grid, and legend etc. Without this it wouldn't feel quite as "official" Again, I went looking at a lot of WW2 military maps, old medieval maps etc to get a feel for the kind of pertinant information one might find on a map of this sort.
Hope that was enlightening Xion
