Allansia, altered

[whump]

This is my first attempt at making a map digitally, and was done with GIMP and Inkscape. Rather than invent a world from scratch I decided to adapt an existing fantasy world, in this case Allansia from the Fighting Fantasy books. This map therefore comes with deepest and most sincere apologies to anyone who has a connection to Allansia, because I have taken extreme liberties and changed it a lot! I hope no one is too offended. Mainly I have increased its size (almost tripled it in fact) and added (lots of) non-canon place names.

Everything was drawn by hand either directly as a bitmap in GIMP or in Inkscape as a path and imported and stroked in GIMP. The rivers are tapered by using different brush sizes. The most time consuming part by far was labelling everything, which was excruciating. If anyone has good ideas about how to label things easily in GIMP I'd love to hear them!

The style is deliberately anachronistic/incongruous. Allansia is a mediaeval high fantasy setting but the style I went for was mid-20th century topographic. This is partly just because I wanted to try something with contours (I like contours ) and partly because I'll use this map for an RPG campaign and I want to know where things are with precision. Actual size is 47x28cm or 4693x2830px; it has been shrunk slightly to get it under the file size limit.

The WIP thread for it is here: http://www.cartographersguild.com/re...-contours.html

Would be great to hear what people think as to what works and what doesn't!

contours_upload5.jpg

[Diamond]

That is simply astounding. I'll have to really look at it when I get home from work, but the level of detail is staggering.

[- Max -]

A Great map indeed, full of details. Hopefully you won't print it though, at print size, a lot of labels and details won't be legible.

[whump]

jbgibson, thank you! The marshland went through lots of iterations and I'm happy it seems to have turned out well. The forests too were just blobs initially. Then I cut them back according to where I thought people would have logged - along the edges, river valleys and so on. It's true you don't see forested hills or mountains that much in the more traditional fantasy perspective style. Something to try...

Gidde, thanks! Sadly my budget does not stretch to PS... maybe one day.

Sheldonl, thank you!

[Llannagh]

I like how it's possible with this style to show forested parts of mountains. Great work! Would rep you again if I could!

[whump]

@-Max-, Thanks! And yes, unfortunately I didn't take printing into consideration when I started this. By the time I got to labelling, I realised that I hadn't set the resolution high enough for the size text I wanted, but by that point I'd done so much and didn't want to fiddle about with changing it. So I was lazy and left it. Next time...

@Llannagh, yes, forested mountains is a nice plus from this style. Also, you can set the treeline with great accuracy using the contours which helps give the forests a nice and convincing shape.

@Diamond Thank you!

[Freodin]

A great style... and very convincingly early / mid 20th century!

BTW, the best way to do labels in GIMP is not to do them in GIMP but use Inkscape.

[Ilanthar]

Very good map, there must be a lot of work to get it!

[lostatsea]

Really like the distressed look you have going. Enough but not overboard!

[whump]

TheHoarseWhisperer, thank you, I'm glad you like it!

AzurePlanet, thanks! and yes the contours were time consuming. My big regret is that I drew them straight in as bitmaps and didn't vector them. I'll check out your WIP.