*** May / June 09 Lite Challenge Voting - Regional Map***

VOTE FOR 2 ENTRIES

click here to view the thumbnails

There has been a tremendous response to this month's lite challenge - 13 entries. To re-sync the competition from mid month to mid month this month's challenge has run for a little longer than usual one month which I think has helped in increasing the number and quality of the entries submitted. The standard has been incredibly high - shouldn't some of you be entering the main competition? :)

I suspect that this is going to be a very difficult vote.

Good luck to all the participants and thank you for taking part. Win or lose, we hope that by entering this month's challenge you have sharpened your mapping skills - which is what these competitions are really about.

Thank you to Redrobes for producing the thumbnails for this month's challenge.

This month's competition rules were:


Your map must be at a regional scale and must contain:

• Forests
• Mountains
• Rivers
• Habitations
• Some Coastline.
• One or more Islands.

Please produce something beautiful.

Please don't forget to give reputation to the authors of the maps you voted for!

This one is very much a toss up for me...lots of good stuff. I finally decided that my main criterion would be originality. To that end I went with Albrecht and StillCypher. The two B & W maps are very strong and there are about 4 or 5 others that show enormous progress and learning and are worthy of votes. If I were choosing other criteria then any one of those would get my vote -- I'll probably think differently tomorrow and wish that I had voted for something else. ;) I offer a "very nice job" to all who entered and hope that I get to see more of your work in the months to come.

I found the voting really hard. There were so many good entries. I went for originality as well, but chose different ones!

Hai-Etlik and Ironmetal's maps got my vote. I particularly liked ironmetal's use of the animals.

I gave all my runner up entries rep by way of apology for not picking them!

It's getting more and more difficult to select "only 2 or 3 or even 4" in these contests.

I went with Jake Woods and msa with StillCypher a very close third.

I'm glad you voted for msa's that one is a stunner.

Yeah that vote is hard to make with just two. I could have easily added a few more. Good luck everybody.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ravells

I'm glad you voted for msa's that one is a stunner.

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:)

Mid-way through the contest, or even until the last week, I was sure I had a good chance of winning. Now, I think I'd be lucky to be in the top 3!

It was a very tough vote. I was drawn towards Imm and Zar because I think they are the most like mine (which I am partial to!). Of them, I think that Imm's frame and textures were just slightly better, so it got my vote. I wanted to give my other vote to something with a different style, and after a lot of back and forth I went with Alb. I really like his color pallet and the stylistic consistency.

Really, so many others deserved a vote. Cypher, in my mind, was neck and neck with Alb in terms of a consistent and complete map. The illustrated maps by Hai, Iron, and Ead were all stunning, and the only reason I didn't consider them was because so many others included a frame, compass rose, and placard that these seemed less complete. And, of course, Jake's map is simply amazing, and probably the only reason I didn't vote for it is because, in my probably broken mind, the photo-realistic map causes cognitive dissonance with the fantasy names and settings.

PS. I think one of the reasons this competition was so stunning is because this was the sort of thing most of us probably joined for. I know I found this board looking for techniques to "map a region" that my D&D group plays in ;)

Quote:

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I think one of the reasons this competition was so stunning is because this was the sort of thing most of us probably joined for. I know I found this board looking for techniques to "map a region" that my D&D group plays in

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I think you're right, msa. Hopefully we'll have a lot more regional / continental / planetary scale maps in the lite challenge going forward.

Some very good maps!
Still, two maps stood out for me: the one from Jakewoods and StillCypher. Especially the map from Jakewoods is stunning I think.

Tough vote here. After mewling over this for about 10 minutes, I finally settled on Immolate and MSA - those are the best of the "finished maps", but almost too close to call.

Great job, everyone!

GP