The World of Eldaron [WIP]

[ScotlandTom]

Sometime soon-ish I plan on running a new Pathfinder group and I've found myself in need of a world in which my players can campaign. In order to create this new world (which I'm calling Eldaron for now) I've decided upon an approach outlined in Korba's excellent WIP thread about his world of Calen Ndor. This method works from the ground up establishing tectonic plates and land masses and incorporating temperature, humidity, wind and ocean currents to create a believable world with logically located biomes. Using this approach will provide me with information on all the basic features of the world as well as the general climate. With those details established I'll never have to guess at how such things should be constructed when a campaign enters new territory.

I won't go through all the steps here as Korba has already done a fine job of doing so in his thread. What I will do is share my current progress:

Eldaron 01.png

In the image you can see the major land masses and island chains as well as the mountain ranges in brown. The biome colors are fairly straightforward.

A = Tropical Rainforest
B = Desert
C = Plains / Grassland / Savannah
D = Temperate Forests / Mediterranean
E = Boreal Forests
F = Arctic / Tundra

I realize that not everything here may be entirely accurate as I have taken a few liberties for artistic purposes, but I'd still be interested to know if anyone notices any glaring issues. Now my major predicament is deciding what artistic style I'll be using to get this map on its way. Any comments / critiques are welcome.

[RobA]

Hi ScotlandTom-

I approved your post. The auto-moderation is a bit aggressive for new members or those with few posts. Sorry for any inconvenience.

-Rob A>

[ScotlandTom]

Understandable, thanks for the help!

[ScotlandTom]

Well I already have some progress since my earlier post. Decided to go ahead and try a more pseudo old-world / calligraphic / whatever you want to call it style. It's something I've never tried before, but I thought it would suit the map.

Eldaron 02.png

The jungle and the miniscule amount of swamp on the western continent are all freehand. The mountains are brushes I picked up courtesy of StarRaven on DeviantArt. I was having trouble doing the mountains by hand so I used the brushes to fill in. I'll likely go back later to give it another go.

I like how it's turning out so far. I'm only worried about two things. 1 - Being able to make the jungles and the temperate forests appear distinct. 2 - The file getting too large for my computer to handle. Ideally I'd like to make this printable at 24"x36", but my computer couldn't handle the file size so it's currently half that. Still sluggish, but at least workable.

[ScotlandTom]

Alright, my final update for the day. I pretty much have the southwestern continent taken care of as far as inking in details is concerned. Figured out how I wanted to do the mountains, yay! I do wish I could've made the temperate forests and the jungles look a little bit more distinct, but I think they're good for now. I've also just realized that two rivers that start on opposite sides of the mountain range almost appear to join somewhere behind the mountain peaks. They don't, but I'll have to take steps to ensure no one misinterprets the illustration.

Eldaron 03.png

I am of course still interested in any comments or critiques anyone may have. I haven't done anything that can't easily be changed. And yeah, I realize I've got some rather nonsensical cliffs in there, but it's a fantasy world so I figure I'll have a little fun.

[Lukc]

Looks very, very good. You might be worried about the size of the cliffs - but remember, the map is a representation of the place, not the place itself. The trees also aren't 20 mile high behemoths and the mountians aren't little line drawings ... so if the cliffs look too high, so what?

Only thing you're going to find a bit hard is keeping all that detail while adding labels.

[ScotlandTom]

Yeah, this is definitely very representational so far as the inked elements are concerned. At this point I really enjoy the style so I think I'll keep going with it, but I'll likely do another more accurate version that's more along these lines.

And labels, yeah... From what I've seen maps done in this kind of style sometimes have a hard time making labels readable over some of the terrain details (especially mountains). I'll probably stick to major labels only (oceans, continents) and leave out all the minor things. I'm sure there will be plenty of experimentation to find the right way to make the labels readable.

Speaking of labels, is there a good resource anyone uses to come up with location names? It always takes me forever to figure out what I want to name a mountain or a kingdom or what have you.

[silverhead]

Very, very nice. I like a lot the colors, they look fantastic. And the hand-drawn elements are very good too. I'm starting to feel jealous :-)

[dangerdog15]

I love the trees. Instead of just using a mass shape to represent them, you added a few larger trees to add character. Nice work!

[ScotlandTom]

Thanks for the compliments! Regarding the trees, yeah, I liked the simplicity of grouping the trees in a larger shape, but I didn't want it to look like I'd just drawn a giant wad of cotton to represent a forest. I figured adding a few individual trees would add a bit of extra life to the forests and also help to further differentiate the types of forests I wanted to depict.

I'll probably be working a bit more on this today. I'll try and put up another shot of my progress later this evening.