Thread: World of Exodus - WiP commission map

Okay, here is the current view. Still to come are climates, terrain features, cities, etc. I actually don't have a great deal to go on here and have been given some freedom to create so we'll see how that goes.

There are some odd climactic features that I have to stick with: Cordel is desert, Nas is icy plains, and Bal is jungle. Maybe not likely in the real world but, hey, it's fantasy. Other features I'm aware of is that Ablis is a volcanically blasted wasteland and that Sametia, Koryth, and Unthara are basically wilderness (some cities/ruins). I actually don't know anything about Gavea (don't remember it mentioned in the PDF but that probably means I should check it again).

So, not much to critique yet but please feel free to give suggestions and pointers!
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Looking pretty good so far Mearrin. I think you could maybe 'tone down' the borders a bit (unless the client wants them that way).

Thanks! Yar. They're a little bold. Stolen straight from the product PDF, though, so it's "in style" with the setting. The guy's a graphic designer so I imagine he'll apply his own treatment when it's done...this was just to give me a feel as my normal tendancy would be toward more muted colors.
M

Nation borders that hug the coastline always sort of bug me, could just be me, though. It's the vivid colors that kinda mess things up. I would suggest erasing the borders along the coast as they aren't really needed there anyways. But you say, "what about the islands?" They have names on them so that's good enough. But if you wanted to have some sort of color denomination then I'd replace the red stroke around the letters for each country and give them their own color stroke. The mainland countries have their inland border plus the color stroke and the islands have a color stroke...should be good enough.

Hello Mearrin,

I like your technique for developing the coastline. It looks great and im sure i will use it for future maps.

Off subject question: How much does a customer pay for a map like this? What goes into the pricing scheme for commission maps? is it the size, the complexity, style? sorry if this is a bit bold, but im curious as to how it works. id love to one day get paid for this type of stuff.

@Ascension: I think I agree with you on the borders. It's kind of a temporary thing that I can take care of later...each is a country-shaped layer with 0% fill and a stroke. At some point I'll flatten them and erase out the parts I don't need. Note that there is also a border along the top and bottom where the shape ends, which I also plan to remove. I'm actually not sure that the colors need to be there, and probably not so brightly even if. Waiting to hear back on that.

@Slylok: Not a lot, really. Let's just say I won't be quitting my day job soon. I'm mainly doing this because it was an unexpected offer and I wanted to give it a try to see where it goes.

Mearrin - looking good.. and congrats on the comm ... think I said that before but that can't be said to much ... I'm also not a fan of colored borders along the coasts... I like my borders where countries clash

slylok - there's been a couple of threads lately on HOW you get commisions and HOW you evaluate your price sceme

*animate thread*
BTW, the client for this dropped off the radar for quite a while but I pinged him and he resurfaced so I guess it's back on. Will be posting an update tonight but wanted to post to put this back on my stack.
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I've really been waffling on this. The publisher really hasn't given me any style guidance (seems pretty open) so I'm fishing about trying to find something that looks good. I've abandoned the branch with the comic-book-style (which seemed appropriate given some of the setting's imagery) and am doing something slightly more realistic - starting with Ascension's atlas-style tutorial (thanks, Ascension). Here's the basics of that, with no "climate gradient".

My next step is to try to take this a little away from the atlas style and a little more toward something more like what I had before. A merger of styles if at all possible. We'll see. In any case, this is all I'm going to do on it tonight so...C&C welcome, if you see any issues feel free to point them out.

Oh, and, I've decided that I'm going to donate my fee for this map to the Guild (it's only $100, so don't get *too* excited).
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