A collection of all my finished maps. Hold on tight... this is gonna be a big thread.

[CaptainJonnypants]

Hey guys.

I've just discovered this forum recently, and rather than posting every single one of my maps individually, I decided to create a thread to dump all my maps in chronological order of the completion date. Hopefully it gives you guys a view on how I've progressed over the years.

My main style stemmed from a traditional sort of black-and-white rendering technique, and has obviously remained so. That said, I have done maps in other styles, as you'll see.

I'm going to attach imgur links for each of the posts instead of uploading the images here, because they are some big *ss images.

Now for the maps...

-- DIGITAL MAPS --

NARODEL
My first map I sat down to make, ever, nearly three whole years ago for a story I had in mind (I never actually finished it by the way). I used a combination of Autodesk Maya to create a sort of elevation map and photoshop to bring out the form, colour it and label it. It didn't turn out as well as I expected it to, back then. Oh well.
http://i.imgur.com/Vao7nDG.jpg

MYRDEN
I grew bored with the 'limits' of Narodel, and so I decided to expand the map. I wanted to extend its borders and make it a world map rather than a map of one small scale area the size of scotland. What resulted was a photoshop illustration more traditional looking than its more ambitious predecessor.
http://i.imgur.com/kbdbgcp.png

VITARUS v1.0
Now I'm going down memory lane for myself. This map here is the beginnings of an ambition I hold so close to my heart that I'm hesitant to post it all here just because of how protective I am of it. But more about that 'ambition' later on.
Honestly, it's been two years since I made this map, and I couldn't tell you how I went about it. I honestly don't remember. All I can recall are vague memories of inspiration and artistic passion. What resulted was a re-arranged, revamped version of Myrden, but with vaguely 3d moutain ranges. I can't even remember how I did those mountains. It was all trial and error and persintence until I got what I wanted. Shame I never document anything I do.
http://i.imgur.com/xV6WQep.png

VITARUS v2.0
But still I was not satisfied. I had an image - a world in my head - that needed to come to life somehow. I still haven't stopped editing this damned map even today. Some days I'll open up the latest version on a whim and set about 'fixing' things pedantically. I'm too much of a perfectionist with my world, I think. But anyways, in this edit, I wanted to achieve a photorealistic effect. A satellite image style. To so this, I looked at satellite images of our own earth and studied the textures of the continents, and thought about what might reflect that on a smaller scale. What would something similar be? It so happened that I have slate tiles in my kitchen. As I was shuffling about getting food, I saw the slate and wondered about how they had this certain fractal, jagged quality like continents. Then it clicked, and I searched for slate texture images. That led me onto marble texture images, which I then copied into photoshop, cut, layered and edited onto my continents. The image here shows the beginnings of my success. Once again, there was a lot of trial and error to make it look 'right' in my eyes.
http://i.imgur.com/6cczGsL.jpg

VITARUS v3.1
Version 3.0 has gone missing, lost somewhere or maybe even deleted for whatever reason, but this is what my technique ultimately resulted in after days upon days of editing and adjusting layers. The photoshop file itself ended up quite bloated and sluggish.
http://i.imgur.com/cFxRRYB.png

VITARUS v3.2
After naming the places.
http://i.imgur.com/JcsRdNv.jpg

VITARUS v3.3 (current)
Here it is at its current stage. As I mentioned earlier, even today I still pull up the PSD file and edit on a whim. I get lost in perfecting the coast lines and colours and positioning of continents to make it look as real as possible. I have huge reservations about posting this finished product online because I have a vision for what I will be using it for, but that’s silly, and it’s high time it came into the light.
Here it is: http://i.imgur.com/alrWBoe.jpg
I feel nervous about posting something I’ve spent so long perfecting online.
Vitarus also goes by the name FesQuedil, or Ephiasal Foz, or a myriad of other names depending on who you asked within the world.

-- HAND DRAWN MAPS --

Now for my other maps; the ones that didn’t take three years to arrive at completion.

UN-NAMED
These two maps are just quick experiments I did on small pieces of printer grade paper with sharpies. I’ve already mentioned that the use of sharpies and black-and-white style would stick with me. As you can see from the names of the places in these maps, I didn’t want to let go of the old Narodel: the first map I ever sat down to finish. All the places in the old Narodel map (the first map posted) were lifted out and placed into these maps instead. It was just an experiment to see how it would turn out.
http://i.imgur.com/77zLNv9.jpg
You’ll notice that these two maps, and the ones following, can all be found in the world-map of Vitarus. That said, these two are extremely difficult to find unless you spent long enough searching for them.

HURKLORT
This map goes along the same lines as the previous: an experiment more than a proper finished map. It’s still untitled and still unlabelled. The area it depicts can be found in the lower half of the continent ‘Jaghen’ amongst the chaotic mess of fragmented provinces.
http://i.imgur.com/u7Y2ObG.jpg

SEPINRO
I used sharpies once again to draw this map, but then I decided to scan it and open it in photoshop to give it an old parchment appearance. that wasn’t enough for me, so I also added a compass rose, numbers and names corresponding to those numbers.
http://i.imgur.com/JdPQMf4.jpg
Once again, this map can be found in the world map. It’s one of the fragmented provinces within southern Jaghen.

THE CAZANTIAN EMPIRE
Once again, same deal as the previous map. I didn’t really finish this one as you can see, but this time I tried out showing the travel routes with red dotted lines. The Cazantian empire’s territory can be found in the same area as the two previous maps.
http://i.imgur.com/7onnI1O.jpg
Just because I feel like sharing, I’ll throw in a bit of lore regarding the Cazantian empire. This link -> http://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuildin...cker_from_the/ is a reddit post with all the info already there, if you’re interested.


ETTSENY
Welp, this map was already posted in a previous thread something like two days ago, so I won’t talk much about this one except to point out that this is my final effort to revive the old Narodel. If you look at the names, they’re largely the same except for the phonetics, which were designed to reflect the local tongue of the province.
http://i.imgur.com/hqPf5Cb.jpg

SILAV
I continued the style of Ettseny onto this map, but this time colouring the borders to show the political landscape.
http://captainjonnypants.deviantart....F29987748&qo=2

ZARTESVA
Not much of a different story here. Continued the sharpie style, but delved into a little more detail.
http://captainjonnypants.deviantart....F29987748&qo=0

NEWNETTAN MONOPOLY PROVINCES
Once again, same story.
http://captainjonnypants.deviantart....F29987748&qo=4

PEQUEROGRAN
And again, same story. This is the most recent map I’ve drawn that is set in my world. As with all of the above maps, there is lore to go along with them but that’s not really what this thread is for.
http://captainjonnypants.deviantart....F29987748&qo=1

ALSATIA - a commission
Now this is a different story. I joined fiverr briefly and did a commission for a kindly fella there who was great to work with and said I could use this finished map to promote myself, which I thought was nice. This was my second taste of commissioned work. I didn’t post the first one because the client would rather their map kept private, so I had to respect that.
http://captainjonnypants.deviantart....F29987748&qo=5

So there we have it. A massive dump of everything I’ve finished in chronological order.

Thanks :)

[arsheesh]

Some very nice work CaptainJonnypants! Every new iteration of Viatarus was an improvement upon the former. The last one is very good. The only recommendation I have is to create shelves in the ocean which are lighter than the ocean floor. Some of your recent hand drawn work is very impressive as well.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Abu Lafia]

Well... this is a really impressive oeuvre! Too much to digest properly atm Have some rep!

[Larb]

Yes, it was interesting to see the evolution of Vitarus across all those maps. Some great stuff there.

[Eilathen]

The maps from ETTSENY on and down are really cool. I like that particular style best. Not that the other maps are bad, mind you! It's just that i like those best. Too bad that, most of the times, the resolution on those handdrawn maps is not that good aka i can not see the maps in enough detail.
Anyway, looking forward to seeing more of your work.

[CaptainJonnypants]

Hmmm... maybe next time I'll upload via imgur for everything. Deviantart seems to scale images down.

Thanks, everyone, for the kind words, though!

[Ilanthar]

Very nice maps and an interesting progression. As Arsheesh, I really like your last Viatarus map.

[aquamunkee]

Hi CaptainJonnyPants,

Just wanted to compliment your work, when I stumbled upon these maps from a Google image search it prompted me to join the Cartographer's Guild!

Cheers,
-Brian
a.k.a. AquaMunkee