The Civilized World and Known Parts of the Wild

[Lingon]

I've hit a bit of a roadblock in the steampunk map I started a little while ago (one could even say I lost steam), so I've started a new wip. This one is for a story I'm writing; first I didn't think I would need a map as it is set in a rather small area, but it grew quite a lot while writing and I'm beginning to feel the need for some organization of the locations. It's an alternate history story that takes place on the Kola peninsula, so I took a screenshot of a section of it from Google Maps, outlined the coast and rivers, printed, and transferred it to aquarelle paper with an improvised light box. Then I looked where the mountains are, and drew in the ranges (returning to the style I used in my first map, after some experimental maps of varying success…). I began inking too, but then I decided some opinions might be good before I make something irreversible.

So, here's what I have so far:
KändaVärlden1.jpg

I'm planning to cover most of the map with forest, and I want it to look really dark and dense and vast. But maybe it's too crowded with rivers and lakes for that? Maybe I should remove some of them. And the mountains, are they big enough? Thinking of increasing their size to make them look more intimidating, but I don't want them to be too out-of-scale either…

Well, those are my main concerns, and the rest should come later

[TempyTheCleric]

I like what you have so far, but it just seems soooo busy with rivers and its a little distracting However its a little difficult to tell what kind of scale this is going to have.

What kind of populus is this going to have?

[mwmagro]

Very Nice This is a nice post!

[- Max -]

Seconded. The bunch of rivers make it hard to "read" for now. What's the scale of it?

[Lingon]

Yeah, that's what I thought. Thanks for the quick feedback! I'll start removing rivers tomorrow The scale just happened to become a nice 1cm=10km on the paper, making the map about 380x280 km. The "civilized world" in this setting is very small

Populus… means something about people, but that's all I know… English isn't my first language, I feel the need to say Maybe I'm not answering your question here, Miranda, but the region will have a single city and a few small villages – if you were asking about something else I'm really sorry!

[Hai-Etlik]

I'd suggest staying away from Google Earth/Maps for a data source. They probably aren't going to take notice but you are violating their copyright (or rather that of whoever licensed the data to Google). There are other data sources you could use instead that are public domain or under open content licenses like OpenStreetMap (CC-BY-SA) or Natural Earth (Public Domain)

[TempyTheCleric]

Populus… means something about people, but that's all I know… English isn't my first language, I feel the need to say Maybe I'm not answering your question here, Miranda, but the region will have a single city and a few small villages – if you were asking about something else I'm really sorry!

You answered it perfectly. That seems like a good size for where the map seems to be heading - design wise. If you had anything more than a single city i would be concerned!

[Lingon]

@Hai-Etlik: Really? I know nothing about this stuff, but it sounds extremely odd to me. I mean, a satellite picture is just a photo, and I'm just using the photo for reference to draw the motif, and they can't claim copyright to the face of the Earth… But, I'm sure you are right. Do I have to redraw the map based on some free source then? That would give me exactly the same result for a lot more work, so I'm not really eager to do that… Is there some other way to get around it?

@Miranda: Great, thanks!

[Lingon]

Maybe I'm being stupid now, but I can't see how using satellite pics as reference could be a copyright violation (though I appreciate the warning, Hai-Etlik!) so I decided to keep working on this version and ink the rivers and lakes that remained after hitting the map with an eraser. Also made the mountains slightly bigger and added some higher peaks to make them more interesting.
KändaVärlden2.jpg

[Neyjour]

Permission Guidelines for Google Maps and Google Earth

I couldn't find any specific info about using satellite images for art reference (either at the link above or with a Google search), but if artists are permitted to use Street View for commercial artworks, I really can't see them having a problem with satellite photos used as reference. Although, you never know...

Unless you're planning on using this for commercial purposes, I wouldn't fret about it too much. But if you want a solid, official answer, just ask them directly:
Google Contact Page

Your map is looking very nice so far! I love your mountains. They look really good! Not so sure about the rivers, though. They look very...squiggly. Looking forward to seeing how this shapes up, especially once you start colouring it!