Here is my completed map of Maioria ☺. It is created in Campaign Cartographer 3 Black & White and the place names and other finer details finished off in GIMP.
MaioriaBlack&WhiteSml.png
The map is for my book, Dark Moon Rising, and thus only shows the continents of The Known World. The people of Maioria believe that the north is so cold it can only be a Kingdom of Ice, the south so hot it is a Kingdom of Fire, the east such a vast ocean that only an Ocean Kingdom exists.
To the west there are myths and rumors of a huge continent, which they call The Unchartered Lands, but no one has ever made it past the Shadowlands to find it - or if they have they have never returned to tell of what they have found.
For the purposes of the book I have only detailed those places mentioned in the book. With each book that I publish (there are six in total) I shall put more details on the map for that book – plus a ‘zoomed-in’ map of certain continents and possibly cities.
As you can see the map is created at quite a ‘high’ level (as in zoomed out), with not much space to put a lot of detail except for the major places and rivers. Also I am constrained to the book dimensions of 12x9 inches (for a double spread) and it was tricky to get everything in. It was also very difficult to legibly detail the places in black ink on a black and white background. Using GIMP to fade out the background under the text achieved this to some extent.
I spent months trying to create this map in colour in CC3 and GIMP but realized converting it to grayscale would not be good enough for the book – which is naturally printed in black and white. So I again started from scratch and re-created what I had in CC3 black & white. Unfortunately it does not look as ‘pretty’ as a coloured map, and it’s my first map, but I do hope to improve in time.
Anyway, thanks so much for your help (I have been reading this forum for about 6 months), your shared knowledge made this map possible ☺. Please leave comments if you wish.
Thanks again
Miafeya