I guess it's time to show you a mapping project I've been working on. It's based on very simple pencil maps a close friend of mine made for a fantasy world called "Timnath" about 30 years ago. Well, after over 120ish hours over the last month, I'm thrilled to say - I'm finished!
As some of you may recall, I posted a thread or two out here when I was struggling with finding the best techniques for a usable tabletop map style. This is a project that I actually started about four years ago, but (frankly) stalled out when I couldn't find a cartography style I could draw with that didn't take 15-20 hours per map tile. Inspiration hit over the holidays, I came up with a technique that let me work a map in about 3 hours (average), and I decided to finally attack the project from scratch one more time - and get these maps DONE!
To give you an idea of how big this thing really is: Each map tile is a full 8.5 x 11 inches @ 300ppi. When printed edge to edge this map is 110" (w) x 102" (h)! It contains numerous climates and features: Arctic, Alpine, Temperate, Arid, Volcanic, Swamp, Jungle, Desert, Mesas, Tropical, etc. Talk about diversity. Each hex is 9 sq miles (or 3 miles edge to edge).
Part of the project is to build a website around this fantasy world. As part of this, I put the map tiles all together in a webpage to show the whole "world" at once. You can click into any of the tiles for a close up. I'll be adding notes to all the maps as my friend sends them over, and making any necessary tweaks.
I still need to put together the map legend so everything makes more sense. Also, if you look, you'll note some anomalies with the rivers and some geographic "problems"... that's how the original maps were drawn, and my interpretation needed to respect those elements. It's a fantasy world where magic messes with everything anyway!
This is probably the single biggest creative project I've ever done. Whew, indeed!
Here's the link (if you are interested):
World of Timnath > World Map
Thanks to those of you who gave me advice way back when. Thanks to all the great artists here who continue to inspire me (I lurk for ideas at times).
Thanks for taking the time to look.
KP