June 2010 Entry: Wheel of Time - from Falme to Fal Dara

[Midgardsormr]

I'm really looking forward to seeing how this one turns out. I'm also a WoT fan, and did a map myself about a year and a half ago: http://www.bryanray.name/illustration/randland.png Feel free to use it for reference—being vector, it's a little easier to read than Mitchell's painting, on which it is based. Apologies for the missing northern border of Andor, though.

You currently have some labeling issues. The high ascenders and descenders of the font you're using make a two-line label almost impossible. For instance, the Fingers of the Dragon label is overlapping itself. And given the amount of space the labels are taking up, I think you should either use Paerish Swar or Darkwood, but not both. Pay close attention to your type hierarchy. Nation labels, being on banners, are probably okay to be a bit small, but I think your town names are overwhelming, and some of the features are certainly too big. I think all of the non-nation labels could do with being shrunk significantly. I love the reversed-out labels on the ocean.

You have a couple of misspellings: Aryth Ocean and Plains of Maredo. I think you could safely lose the "the" from The Fingers of the Dragon. Oh, and I think World's End is actually that peninsula to the left of where you've put the label.

The woodcut texture you're using is cool, but it's too fine across the land, I think. It puts me in mind of the interlacing on an old black-and-white television. Maybe that will improve as more features go down, though. I like the mountains at Windbiter's Finger; see if you can't get them to integrate better by using the same sort of hatching that you have on the banners, or at least the same quality of shading as you have in the banners' shadows.

Again, I'm eager to see your finished product!

[Werthead]

Great stuff! Some observations, which I hope aren't too many or unhelpful:

The town on the River Cary is Carysford. The name on the map appears to be Garysford.
Aridhol/Shadar Logoth is on the south side of the Arinelle, just east of where the river swings north to Saldaea (it can't be west, otherwise Bayle Domon would never have stopped nearby), not the north side (unless you are putting the name north for space, with the actual ruins marked on the south shore).
The Damona Mountains are an important range in Altara, running south-east from Garen's Wall and forming part of the border with Murandy. Given the important action that happens there in Book 11, including them might be a good idea.
There's also the Banikhan Mountains, the Sea Wall of Saldaea, that run parallel to World's End a short distance inland, which is where Lan gets an important mission underway in Book 11.
In addition are the Maraside Mountains, which run along the southern border of Cairhien separating it from Haddon Mirk to the south. As the site of Artur Hawkwing's great victory over Guaire Amalasan, including them would be cool.
You may also wish to include the city of Canluum, located a short distance south-east of Chachin in Kandor, from New Spring.
In addition are the Doirlon Hills, located along Illian's eastern border on the Plains of Maredo, where a huge (but mostly off-screen) battle between Rand's army and Sammael's forces raged in Book 7.

I like the idea of including Thakan'dar and showing the lake formed by the split in the Erinin around Tar Valon, but realistically both would be invisible on this scale. The Erinin around Tar Valon is only 10 miles or so long and maybe 4-5 miles wide at best, whilst Thakan'dar is literally a valley running around the edge of Shayol Ghul, not extending for hundreds of miles to one side of it.

Oh, and I think World's End is actually that peninsula to the left of where you've put the label.

World's End is the name given to the cliffs along the Saldaean shore of the Aryth Ocean south of the peninsula where the Mountains of Dhoom tumble into the sea. Lan and Nynaeve visit them briefly in Book 11. The peninsular is not named in the books.

I've also found numerous maps equating a league to four miles.

In The Wheel of Time books a league is four miles. I know it isn't the 'traditional fantasy' length of 1 league = 3 miles that Tolkien and Martin use, but it's what Jordan uses in his world.

The total size of the Westlands subcontinent is something on the order of 3,500 miles from east to west, according to the world map in the companion book. The RPG designers also worked out with Robert Jordan that 1"=400 miles on the colour endpaper maps in the hardcover books, although that's not precise. In fact, they weren't able to get an accurate scale everyone was happy with, so left it off the RPG map, although the 1"=400 miles thing does work as a rough guide, and matches most of the references in the text.

For some reason maps that go out of the "frame" bug the crap out of me

The eastern end of the continent, including the much bigger subcontinent of Shara and the rest of the Aiel Waste, can be seen here. A map of the full continent can be seen here. The even vaster continent of Seanchan across the Aryth Ocean can be seen here. You can see a full world map here.

Mentioned earlier in the thread, the 13th Depository probably has the most exhaustive collection of maps of the books yet seen.

[tilt]

yep, agree with Midgaardsormr, lot of interlacing going on - making everything really hard to read. Maybe you should resize to 50% before making the jpg you upload to reduce size also

[Immolate]

Ah yes, I'm familiar with your map Midgardsomr. I've been using it extensively in this process.

Thank you for the thorough critique. I feel that the best way to honor that sort of an effort is to take it seriously, and I have. I'm surprised I only made two typos. I can't tell you now many typos I've found looking at other people's published maps. The mapper at the 13th depository is probably the most prolific Wheel of Time mapper but even he or she made a dog's dinner (WoT phrase) of the map of Sheinar, putting Faldara north of Tarwin's Gap. I've also found numerous maps equating a league to four miles.

Just FYI, the labeling of the World's End vertically as I did it was the same as the book map method. I agree though that it's more useful and accurate to have it horizontal.

The labels are a struggle of course. There are a lot of important places on the map. My first attempt did have some really big labels that needed to come down. I've been through four fonts with the place names before I found one that didn't annoy me too much. I'd love to hear everyone's opinion on that. One thing you learn quickly when you're dealing with big maps: you immerse so deeply that you can't really see the map objectively anymore.

I've collected and added some names to the map, along with rivers.

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[Gidde]

I like the new font for place names, it differentiates from political names beautifully. The rivers are gorgeous!

[Ascension]

The hand-written Timesesque (heh, I made up another word for ya there ) font looks great but I think of Aquilline much like Papyrus...overused. No biggie, it's a nice font. The ocean has me scratching my head, though. It has some subtle colors, which are cool, and I'm wondering if there will be some more subtle color in the land. It also has this kind of "fields" pattern on it that I'm still pondering...don't know if I like it or not. I leaning towards liking it but maybe turn down the opacity a bit...shrug. You might want to hide those rivers that are showing through the banners with a solid color instead of a lower opacity. It looks pretty damn sweet, though, so these are just some minor nits.

[Immolate]

Thanks for the pointers Ascension. I haven't used the font myself so I wasn't aware of its overuse. I don't notice that sort of thing in the maps of others. I tend to see the whole thing and not notice the components. The ocean is actually a pretty standard crosshatch pattern with a filter of texturizer-grain-clumped-low intensity-high contrast. I've toned it down a bit.

It's hard to hide the rivers as they are actually a carved out part of the land. However, I can put a blank behind the banner to keep the river from bleeding through, or crank up the opacity of tha banners in general.

Some changes to the mountain methodology, plus some added low mountains on Tremalking. I've also blended in some woodcut texture to the land. I know that traditionally, the woodcut goes on the ocean side, but I wanted to try this to see how it feels. Feedback from others is welcome on this especially.

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[tilt]

As Ascension said I also noticed the rivers looking through the labels, and feels that spoils the labeling a little. I feel the wood cut in the land is making everything harder to read, liked the look before that, however it did look a little like the rivers were hovering over the map, and if anything should hover it should be the country names instead

[Midgardsormr]

I'm surprised I only made two typos.

Two that I noticed, anyway. I won't assert that I saw all of them, particularly now that you've added some less significant names to the map.

I've also found numerous maps equating a league to four miles.

I don't remember what conversion Jordan was using, but "league" is an uncertain measure, being the distance that can be traveled in an hour on foot. Four miles is not outside of the range of acceptable values. I've seen examples of leagues as small as 1.5 miles (the Roman league) and as large as 5. I did not bother to try to convert to miles on my map, since leagues is the unit used in the books, and the only really useful scale statement I can recall was the distance from Tar Valon to Tear.

Anyway, back to the art:
Even with the additional visual interference from the new woodcut, the new labels are much easier to read and less chaotic. You're definitely going to want to make an apostrophe for that font that doesn't have one, though. Incomplete fonts are a pain, aren't they?

I'm definitely liking the hatched mountains, but they need to be blurred a bit to integrate properly with the map. Are you using a version of Photoshop that supports Smart Filters?

I love that huge watermark. I didn't notice it when I was looking closely at the map, but it's clearly visible in the thumbnail. Very nice touch.

Incidentally, I notice that you've used the name Aridhol rather than Shadar Logoth—is there a reason for the anachronism?

[tilt]

..."league" ... Four miles is not outside of the range of acceptable values.
...to make an apostrophe for that font that doesn't have one, though. Incomplete fonts are a pain, aren't they?

I love that huge watermark. I didn't notice it when I was looking closely at the map, but it's clearly visible in the thumbnail. Very nice touch.

Agree with Midgard, stay with leagues and incomplete fonts ARE a pain - especially when you live in a country with letter like æ ø å Æ Ø Å (don't know if they'll show up properly) but they cause big problems when I convert books from US to European format as the designer in the US don't care if those letters aren't there, which leaves me to desperatly try to find a like font thats "complete".
Didn't see that watermark either - thanks for drawing my attention to it - cool