May 2011 Challenge Entry - The Western American Empire

[Diamond]

I really like it! Curious to see how you're going to fill the black bit on the right...text?

I'm thinking right now it's gonna be, top to bottom, an ornate title box, a text box with a more condensed version of the wall o' text from my first post, a box with a few flags of various regions, a key box, and the already in-place inset map.

[Diamond]

Update time. The basic mountain layout is done; to help define them better, I'm going to add some light shadow/crosshatching to them.

I dialed back the ocean quite a bit. Kinda like it better now, but its subject to change.

I also started to play around with some city locations. The capital should be self-evident, and the two other sizes are large and small cities. This is a time where technology has reverted back to 19th century levels (with a few notable exceptions), along with populations. A massive exodus off-world occurred a few centuries back, and plagues, ecological disaster, and massive wars knocked out a whole lot more. So with that in mind, large areas have reverted to wilderness, with the Empire having only nominal control over them. (Think Byzantium's control over southern Spain.)

For labeling, I'm gonna go all out this time. Not only are there going to be a lot of names - cities, regions, natural features, what have you - many of them will be fancy-schmancied with small banners and flourishes, a la Ascension's recent 'practice' map. (Practice. Yeah, right. )

[Ascension]

Looks great, man.

[eViLe_eAgLe]

I want to argue about how the mountain is laid about.. But I remembered this is a while into the future so for all I know the mountain ranges could have changed.

[Diamond]

I want to argue about how the mountain is laid about.. But I remembered this is a while into the future so for all I know the mountain ranges could have changed.

Yeah, they're definitely not strictly accurate. For one thing, this is a 'hand-drawn' map, and it's about 800 years from now, after some pretty drastic upheavals.

Please forgive me.

[ravells]

This look fab, really nice feel to it and great composition.

[eViLe_eAgLe]

Yeah, they're definitely not strictly accurate. For one thing, this is a 'hand-drawn' map, and it's about 800 years from now, after some pretty drastic upheavals.

Please forgive me.

Its quite fine.

[Diamond]

Finished all the smaller detail work on the mountains; originally I was going to add some subtle coloring to them also, but I decided to opt for a more clean look, especially since all the labels will be doing the heavy lifting for color, etc. I don't want to clutter things up too much.

### LATEST WIP ###

[Ascension]

Very nice, very nice. Like them simple mtns, man, and colors are good.

[ravells]

I'm with big A, that mountain shading looks perfect for this map! Great call!