December Entry: Yuleblood

[Sapiento]

Barbarian Head Soup! Sounds delicious.

[Gamerprinter]

Barbarian Head Soup! Sounds delicious.

LOL!

Got bored of doing illustrations, but I'll get back to it when I'm done with the map. So I just started working on the Elflands portion of the map. I'm going to make the structures somewhat oversized as they are as much labels as depictions of what's there.

Question, is this too detailed, so far. I started by drawing at much larger scale then shrink to fit my needs. Is this too detailed?

Instead of a map created by orcs - huh, orcs don't need maps. This is a map of the region provided by the bard who assembled this document, translating the tale from the Orcish to Common, which is by far less pretty (the bard came by the tale while being stored in an orc pantry one winter night. He saved himself by singing a song of praise to the First Orc Ancestor, in the limited Orcish he had known...)

GP

Edit: yech, I didn't like that halo shadow thing, so I dropped it, lightened, changed the purple to more of a blue - I think this is better.

Still undecided if this is too light, and the lines too fine... I can always upscale the map area, so the graphics stay the same, but I've got more room to place regions of the map...

[Gamerprinter]

Added the Great Fens, land of the men in stone towers - I have yet to add the towers. Moving right along. Notice I left a blank area on the edges to place a border later on. Note I made the Elven castle smaller.

GP

### Latest WIP ###

[Gamerprinter]

On review, I think I'll draw the Fen marsh grass at larger scale so I can shrink it down to match the line style of the forest.

GP

[Ramah]

I think that is a wise choice. I was going to comment on it earlier that when the map is at full scale your trees and castle look good, with fine lines but we get too close to the fen, seeing it as a collection of stubby but quite thick lines.

Love your castle btw.

[Gandwarf]

Excellent

[Gamerprinter]

Border complete, map resized, details tweaked - I'm done!

Next finish the last illustration and the cover design then all done!

GP

PS: actually the border line work looks blurry or faded, need to tweak that... actually the border fought me this morning, and it seems layers moved around as well. Lots of tweaking still...

### Latest WIP ###

[Ghostman]

Looks very good to me, but those lakes seem like they're begging to be named. Oh and some of the border markings appear to be spilling over the edges. Might look better trimmed.

[Gamerprinter]

Final map for sure!

I named those unnamed lakes, I tweaked the layers and put everything under the border.

Changes and additions:

1. Someone on another site, suggested I give some splotchy color on the western side of the map as it seemed too stark white - so I did.

2. I hated the barbarian stronghold and the other one didn't capture the perspective well, though this isn't perfect either, its improved.

3. To put more "story" into the map, while at the same time preventing me from having to place a road - I thought that might detract from the map, in the northeast corner, I placed some background story relating to the Twelve Nights of Yuleblood poem as a bard's tale relating his experience having learned of it first hand - he being the author and cartographer of the tale. Besides the Fen is mostly a waste of space. Strangely my underlying sense of balance has come through again and the elven forest seems surrounded by the rest of the terrain because of the created shape of the rivers and the text label.

No more changes!

GP

PS: trying to think whether a project like this is worth publishing, I've hit upon another idea. What if I package this map, the illustrated poem in children story book format, followed by a 1st level Pathfinder RPG adventure featuring Orc player characters as the adventuring party - all the map locations are enough for a complete level one adventure - too bad it won't make it before Christmas!

### Latest WIP ###

[Gamerprinter]

Since the map is done, its back to finishing up the extra credit. I still need to do one more illustration, and I still might improve on the first illustration, but I just did the cover design as I knew what I intended. (I've got a comic style Frazetta going on here...)

The Cover Design!

Enjoy!

GP