Western OZ - Commissioned Map

[xpian]

A commissioned map for a writer, this map depicts a heretofore unknown region of the lands of Oz (a setting which is now in the public domain). The Emerald City anchors things in the upper right corner, from whence the characters of the story set out to cross the great nameless gorge. One path is by air, floating above it all in a balloon launched from the Eye o’ the Witch airport. The other is darker and perhaps more dangerous, descending along the path known as the Devil’s Walk. The broken lava fields of Hell’s Hearth must be traversed before one can brave the terrors of the Monkey’s Jungle. Who knows what strange things will be found in the Valley of the Vegans before at last reaching the idyllic safety of the farmlands surrounding Cornucopia?

I worked with the writer of this story for several months, through many rounds of revisions, exploring different looks and concepts for the various terrains. After all the back and forth, you see the final product here.

Most of the map is hand-drawn, digitally, in ProCreate on the iPad using an Adonit Jot Touch stylus. The map was assembled and composited in Adobe Photoshop, which is also responsible for the text labels. Some touch-up work was done in Manga Studio with a Wacom Intuous and folded into the Photoshop file.

The resolution of the final file is quite high, at 7200 by 5562 pixels. It’s intended to be printed as a large poster—a reward for kickstarter backers—and also to exist as a map page in a large-format printed book.

[Chick]

WOW, some amazing artwork here!!

I love how your waterfalls incise back into the cliffs, perfect! Even a switchback trail!

Not super crazy about the patterned lands, but the mountains are gorgeous!

[J.Edward]

Great work XP. Lots of fun stuff in there.
Always enjoyed the Land of Oz. This does it justice.
Cornucopia looks fabulous. All around fine work.

[Sapiento]

Wonderful map!

[Obbehobbe]

Really really nice!

[Kellerica]

Wow, that is beautiful! I think I saw someone around here saying that the best way to get a hand-drawn look is to actually draw it by hand, and it does ring true here. I salute your penmanship, good sir.
I love the hell out of the compass rose and the 'Western Oz' logo, are those your own designs as well? They look amazing!

The book also immediately caught my interest, is there someplace where I might look it up?

[ChickPea]

Wow, this is fabulous!

[Ilanthar]

Amazing mountains and cities/buildings for a great map. I'm not fond of the crop fields and lava zone, they don't completely match the rest of the map imho. I love the logo too.

[xpian]

Thanks to everyone for the kind words! This is the map I've poured the most time and effort into, so it's naturally quite nice to hear it being appreciated. For a while there it was feeling like it would never be done, and was driving me a little crazy.

@Kelleri - The logo and the compass rose were built by me in Adobe Illustrator. I was exercising my graphic design skills there, slicing and combining vector shapes and then draping carefully-tweaked layer styles onto them in Photoshop. The border was built pixel-by pixel and then laid in and repeated. I don't have a link for the KickStarter of the book yet, but as soon as it launches I'll post that in this thread.

Here are a couple of zoom-ups of parts of the map at 100% resolution, showing what the final detail level is like. I may have gone a little overboard with the resolution. ;-)

[arsheesh]

Fantastic work on this Xpian! Congrats on the commission. I love how you did the Emerald city, and the linework is fantastic as well. Repped and rated.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh