VOTING: *** February '09 Challenge - Political Map ***

[Steel General]

VOTE FOR 3 ENTRIES!!!

Make sure to rep the entrants you voted for!

The challenge was:

This month's idea comes from the challenge suggestion forum, compliments of joão paulo.

We are looking for a socio-political map. The style, era and scale are your choice. It can come from the real world, a fantasy world or a future world.

A focus of this map MUST be political identifiers.... Flags, crests, banners or coats of arms must appear prominently on the work.

Thumbnail page is here.
General Rules are here.

[Steel General]

OK, another difficult vote this month;

tcberry - even though I'm not a baseball fan, this was a unique take on the challenge
Qbista - just a fantastic map all-around
GamerPrinter - great job on an era I knew little to nothing about

EDIT: Honorable mention for: Ascension, Hoel & Darken

[joão paulo]

It's hard to choose just three.

Everyone did a good job.

But this month my votes are for GamerPrinter,Qbista and Hoel.

[Redrobes]

I ran the thumbs script yesterday, post here if its not up to date and showing your latest entry !!!

[Ascension]

I went with Qbista for his classy antique map, tcberry cuz I'm a huge baseball guy, and Gamerprinter cuz I think this is his best style. Honorable mentions to Hoel for his great crests, Steel General for his mindblowing detail, Bohunk for his always top notch quality, and mogul76 for doing a nice job with this challenge in B&W.

[CBDroege]

My thumbnail has not been updated to the latest version.

I certainly wont get any votes for that old version... I had it up and properly tagged by the 24th.... :/

[CBDroege]

Hoel for meeting the requirements of the challenge most effectively
tcberry for the unique idea and superb execution
qbista for style and functionality

[Fabrice]

It is no easy choice but I think my votes go for:

tcberry: I am no baseball fan but there is some insight there: check a Paris - Marseilles soccer game and you see which kind of allegiances matter these days.

Gamerprinter: beautiful, stylish, asian: I like!

Korrigan: I love the letter that went with the map, I like the blood on the map, and I like zombies.

And a special "out of competition" bravo for Kuraru. It looks like his "Divine the next Challenge Subject" ritual misfired, so he drew and posted his map a few month early, but it was pretty nice and could have been a good entry for this month.

http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=3759

[jfrazierjr]

Hard vote this month. Here are my votes in the order I picked them and why:

• Hoel: This was my favorite for several reasons, but mainly, I think this best expressed the intentions of the contest and went to the extreme to satisfy the requirements, by creating one but TWO levels of political divisions. This as excellent thinking outside of the box, and those flags and standards really really are excellently done. The map itself is a bit to blurry for me(may have been intentional to bring out the flags), but overall, the map was still very nicely done and it was the contest rules that made you get the win.
• Steel General: To me, this is by far the prettiest map for the sake of being a map, but it was second because Hoel outdid him on the political map part of the requirement both by sheer numbers as well as have two political divisions.
• Gameprinter: Very nice map, with clear identifiers as well as some very nice extra's such as the drawings of the prominent figures as well as the hanging banner type approach to the whole thing. There are a quite a few places where the map felt a bit crowded though with everything that was going on.

[NeonKnight]

My Choices (in order of preference actually) are:

HOEL: His I felt captured the spirit the most, and I can look and see and understand it all without needing to refer to the Legend. The Crests invoked immediately what I needed to know. To north, Barbarians with fur hides, and everything else, to the west, Pseudo Eruopean. To the east Native American influence, to the south, Similar to the Guals, and Goths around the end of the Roman Empire, and to the far south, Middle Eastern/Romoan/Egyptian. PERFECT!

Next was Darken's Battletech map. Love the Battletech (Clan Draco always my favorite, though House Steiner seemed to always be the favored one )

Finally came Qbista's map. Very Evocative, I just with the Crests were more pronounced on the final map, instead of subdued and part of the 'background'.

Good Job All!