Evensfell World Map

**Ciderhelm** · 06-01-2010, 05:28 AM

The following is a map of the world of Evensfell, as it was before the Second Great Winter.

The map is hand-drawn with a WACOM Cintiq, fully in Photoshop. The biggest struggle with this map was moving away from symbol-based fantasy map style and trying to reconcile that background with a purely top-down 'satellite' view. My biggest source of inspiration in the art design for this project was USGS and National Park maps. Overall, learning this style took several months of trial and error, and this particular map took several weeks.

Update: I've created a YouTube video using this map, "The Cartographer's Story." Check it out here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoMOjLwFje0

The original ~2007 map I drew for this project can be found here.

**Gidde** · 06-01-2010, 09:33 AM

That's beautiful. I particularly love the snowcaps. Repped!

**tilt** · 06-01-2010, 03:57 PM

Looking really good - you do however have a lot of river violations in there

... try to follow this simple rule "two rivers enter - one river leaves" - like thunderdome

so basicly a river never splits, never goes from ocean to ocean and always flows towards the sea.

**Ciderhelm** · 06-01-2010, 04:19 PM

Originally Posted by tilt

Looking really good - you do however have a lot of river violations in there

... try to follow this simple rule "two rivers enter - one river leaves" - like thunderdome

so basicly a river never splits, never goes from ocean to ocean and always flows towards the sea.

There are real-world exceptions I was modeling after -- specifically, the man-made canals between the Great Lakes that joined distinct rivers and shipping routes in the Eastern United States. The river/lake networks in Evensfell were engineered by a previous people.

**torstan** · 06-01-2010, 04:32 PM

Very pretty colours. Like the layout too. I agree about the rivers though - the ocean to ocean one in the south is really unphysical.

Edit: Ah well, if it's a canal then that's a different matter.

**tilt** · 06-01-2010, 04:36 PM

Originally Posted by Ciderhelm

There are real-world exceptions I was modeling after -- specifically, the man-made canals between the Great Lakes that joined distinct rivers and shipping routes in the Eastern United States. The river/lake networks in Evensfell were engineered by a previous people.

Well man made structures and of course magic at large are both good reasons for rivers going where no river has gone before

**Ciderhelm** · 06-01-2010, 06:14 PM

The feedback here is good. There's a presentation issue, and if the map is unnatural at first glance, then I think it would be better to rework those rivers (particularly the South).

The rivers were drawn at a point where I thought I'd be able to show other parts of the engineering on the map. Most significantly, there's a dam that is not visible on the world map that stretches across the outer islands of the "Shallowed Expanse" (in other words, that's a large freshwater lake). I just couldn't get something I was happy w/ there, so I scrapped it and decided to show it on more detailed, zoomed-in maps.

That said, I think it'd be safe to do the canals in that zoomed-in format as well and make sure things look a bit more natural.

**tilt** · 06-02-2010, 04:22 AM

sounds like you have a lot of cool ideas for your world - looking forward to seing more of it

**Ciderhelm** · 07-25-2010, 06:03 PM

I've created a movie called "The Cartographer's Story" that uses this map. The movie can be viewed at my channel on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoMOjLwFje0

I've also updated the coloring and a few other details, but the movie is the big update warranting a bump.

**Gidde** · 07-25-2010, 06:10 PM

That movie is pretty darned cool

Have some rep!

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