The World of 1883 - Steamclock World Map [WIP]

[Lingon]

Nice to see that you are working on this again! I really love the style, though maybe it's just me but I get more of a dieselpunk feeling from it than steam… Probably the horizontal lines in the oceans, they give an art deco look to the map. But please don't change them, it's awesome I agree with Max's points too.

[Endyr]

wow that map is beautiful. How long did that take you? In love the colors

[Falconius]

This map is awesome and it always makes me think of this song, which is double awesome.

[Klaus van der Kroft]

Looks nice Klaus A few comments though : the borders looks a bit pixellated and the diagonal labels should rather be better if curved.

Thanks!

About the borders, I'll give them a look to see how to fix it (you are refering to the red lines between the borders or to the coloured inner sides?). And I agree about the names; I was being a bit lazy and adding them on straight lines to see how the fonts looked, but I should get working on the curvilineous applications!

Nice to see that you are working on this again! I really love the style, though maybe it's just me but I get more of a dieselpunk feeling from it than steam… Probably the horizontal lines in the oceans, they give an art deco look to the map. But please don't change them, it's awesome I agree with Max's points too.

Hah, thanks! That actually might be correct; to be completely honest, I'm just throwing stuff at the walls here and seeing what sticks. Never had much of a good eye for stylistic design!

wow that map is beautiful. How long did that take you? In love the colors

Thank you very much. Time-wise, drawing the thing itself is rather quick (the coloured borders are all done through layer effects, so I just hard-paint the territory of a nation and apply the style, which saves a lot of work and makes changes very easy); it's the research and constant fixing of the territories that takes a lot of time. Since the map depicts an alternate version of the world in 1883 -a year that's not well documented cartographically, since it's sandwiched between other more important events, like the Treaty of Berlin of 1884-, getting the borders to be properly historical (and ahistorical, of course) is quite the challenge.

This map is awesome and it always makes me think of this song, which is double awesome.

Hehe!

[Klaus van der Kroft]

It's been almost two and half years! Goodness, time does fly! Started a new business, which has been eating away at my free time like langoliers on steroids.

Still, time for some necromancy!

I've gone back to this project and decided to start from scratch; the projection I used on the original one was bugging me (particularly with the southern hemisphere), so I've gone and drawn it again, using a french map from the early 1900's as guide. I also included some changes to the landmasses, now that I have a much better established background (there's still a bit missing in China, once I figure out how to represent flying landmasses).

Here's the progress so far for the new version. I'm still testing out the colours; figured I'd go with a paper tone for both land and sea.

[Diamond]

Nice revision. This one's a keeper!

[Klaus van der Kroft]

Thanks, Diamond!

Made some more progress today. Mostly focused on adding nations/colonies and names for both geographical and political features. Changed the orientation of some of the labbels, trying to better align them with the latitudes when room allows.

[caribbeancasa]

Hi Klaus,

Love the map and the creative landmasses in the Southern Hemisphere.

If I could give one very small suggestion it would be to alter the placement and angle of your continent descriptors so that they clash with the country borders as little as possible, reducing distraction.

For instance, 'Europa' could be changed from the 45 degree angle (roughly) that it currently inhabits to a more subtle 20 degree angle which would make the words a little easier to read since the back-half of Europa would be in Northern 'Austria-Hungry'.

For 'America Del Norte', you could reduce the font size slightly of the 'America Del' part so that it fits nicely within the blue backdrop of the 'Estados Unidos'. The 'Norte' could be moved down and slightly to the right so that falls completely within the white backdrop of 'Estados Confederados'.

This might help those two descriptors not get as lost or muddled.

In any case, it's a brilliant work and one that I will be watching.

P.S. any update on your steampunk roleplaying game?


Regards,
Scott

[Ilanthar]

Really nice so far. This projection is a good choice, I think, and the coastlines are excellent.

[Klaus van der Kroft]

Made some more progress tonight. Added frames to the hemispheres, as well as a circular scale; upon doing this, I noticed I had made some mistakes with the latitudes and longitudes (they were skewed in some areas), so I had to draw them all again. I might have to revisit the scales, though; some bits seem a bit raw/pixelated now that I look at them. Fixed some labbels as well. Not entirely sure about how the Artic Ocean labbel looks now; it's aligned with the latitude, but seems odd in that angle so close to the edge.

I might also need to go over the colours, to make the palette more consistent with the style and less flashy (right now I've been mostly just choosing colours at random to tell things appart).

Hi Klaus,

Love the map and the creative landmasses in the Southern Hemisphere.

If I could give one very small suggestion it would be to alter the placement and angle of your continent descriptors so that they clash with the country borders as little as possible, reducing distraction.

For instance, 'Europa' could be changed from the 45 degree angle (roughly) that it currently inhabits to a more subtle 20 degree angle which would make the words a little easier to read since the back-half of Europa would be in Northern 'Austria-Hungry'.

For 'America Del Norte', you could reduce the font size slightly of the 'America Del' part so that it fits nicely within the blue backdrop of the 'Estados Unidos'. The 'Norte' could be moved down and slightly to the right so that falls completely within the white backdrop of 'Estados Confederados'.

This might help those two descriptors not get as lost or muddled.

In any case, it's a brilliant work and one that I will be watching.

P.S. any update on your steampunk roleplaying game?

Regards,
Scott

Thank you very much, Scott.

Yeah, I forgot to move the continental labbels around after I added the nations and their own labbels underneath. Europe was particularly hard to read.

As for the game, pretty advanced! I reckon about 80-90% of the manual is ready (300 pages mostly set in stone, and I'm guessing I can squeeze the rest of the stuff I'm working on in about 50 pages. Currently, I'm actually working on what to leave out to avoid the thing growing too large, since now comes the art and editing. I'm setting stuff aside for a "Book of Chronicles" that focuses on the deeper secrets of time travel, so I can cover that thing in proper detail).

The plan is to publish it on PDF via OneBookShelf (I've sold a manual I wrote for Pathfinder and it was a great experience), and then immediately get working on the English translation. I'm checking with some guys about the option of self-funding a small hardback printing in China to see how it goes, but getting it out in pdf and testing the waters is the current goal. God willing, 2016 is the year I finally get to publish it, considering progress during 2015 was huge (2014 saw almost none, in contrast).

Really nice so far. This projection is a good choice, I think, and the coastlines are excellent.

Thanks, man. I feel much more comfortable with this projection (even if it makes drawing borders harder!).