Oooh! An interesting-looking Challenge! And it looks like I'm already outclassed!

But no matter. This is going to be a series of maps chronicling a colonial war involving alternate European empires and a very alternate Indian subcontinent. I'm using the geography from my award-losing Gulf of Malabor map and trying to render it in something more akin to a 19th century engraved style. This first map is the "before" picture, showing the borders and affiliations (well, not yet) before the war.

### Latest WIP ###
Click image for larger version. 

Name:	bordersBefore.png 
Views:	102 
Size:	273.9 KB 
ID:	16696

A few things of note in this map. First, labels are really hard to get looking acceptable, especially for those narrow slivers of countries that follow rivers. Second, if you look at the borders, you'll notice that they're a bit too rough. Basically, the borders are (mostly) simple polylines with some fractal noise added; getting the mix right is a trick. (Perhaps I need to add some smoothing afterwards.) The borders paralleling rivers are the same process, applied to a transformed river path. It's a really simple technique which looks surprisingly good (though, as I noted, too rough).

Still, I'm pleased with the start. Should be a fun month!