Fantasy Capital City Map

[Donovan]

SUBJECT

I am looking for a fantasy city map that is a hub of commerce. The city itself is located at the base of a mountain range, so the North and East of the city will have mountains. There is a river that flows from the mountains in the NorthEast corner of the city, through the city and out to the SouthWest. The city itself is a bustling center for trade of all kinds, and there are miners and fishermen that work the area as well. Due to the trade in the area, there is a diverse collection of races and architectural design.

The key features of the city should include a temple district, with temples to 10 deities. (PF deities of good and neutrality) A slums area that is separate and upstream from the main city itself. An older, smaller keep (see below) that has probably been turned into military barracks, and a new larger keep has been designed. (Possible elven influence in design)

The city itself started as a castle and a small village that was walled off for protection. Over the past 200 years, the city has grown rapidly and haphazardly with new walls being built occasionally. Due to this, the city should not be symmetrical.

STYLE

Something similar to https://www.pinterest.com/pin/186477240797993102/ or https://www.pinterest.com/pin/38280665557697970/ would be good.

QUALITY AND SIZE

• Semi-professional or better
• Possible for print
• 72 DPI, up to 8.5 x 11"

TIME CONSTRAINTS

Before July 27, 2017

COPYRIGHT

I will have the right to use the image for commercial purposes, the artist will have the right to exhibit the image as part of his portfolio but not to exploit it for commercial gain.

PAYMENT
This is for a home game, so not looking to spend a lot of money. Paypal would be preferred payment method, but other arraignments could be made.

CONTACT DETAILS

jaierwin (AT) yahoo (DOT) com

[Donovan]

So going through other posts on the requests, it seems that a lot of the city map requests are not the most sought after commissions. Is there a reason for that? What is the right bait to use to find those city cartographers? LOL I have already commissioned a world map from a professional cartographer, but even they did not want to touch the city map I was wanting.

[Wired]

I'm throwing out a wild guess and will say that city maps are an awful lot of work, and that it's probably a lot harder to find common financial ground on such a project?

[Tonnichiwa]

Hi Donovan.

City maps are by far the hardest kind of map to make. They take an incredible amount of time to draw, especially if the client wants each building to be unique, or even if they want just a few of the buildings to be unique. They become even more hard to draw if someone wants them done in a perspective/isometric style. It can take a very long time to put each one of those buildings down and then try to get all of the terrain and gardens and city walls, and other buildings to all fit together nicely. Normally you can expect to pay around $300 USD for just a basic city, and that is before factoring in anything like how much copyright the map requester wants. That can make the price go up quite a bit depending on if they want to just have the map licensed for a year or a few years or if they are expecting full copyright and not allowing the artist to make any kind of money off of it.

A lot of people don't have the money or don't want to pay what it takes to get a city made.

By looking at what you are looking for, your request would probably be on the expensive side of things because you are looking for full copyrights, and not allowing the artist to do anything but put the map in his portfolio. You are also wanting specialized buildings in the form of the temples, old walls that look like they've been expanded on with new walls, specific styles of buildings for many different areas of town to make them look like areas for fishermen, slums, miners, etc. Then you want it done by July 27th of this year. It is already the 18th.

Basically you are looking at having quite a lot of work done in a very short amount of time and then saying you aren't looking to spend a lot of money. But to get that kind of work done in that amount of time will cost you. That is just the reality of it and probably why you haven't gotten any responses yet.

With all of the things you have asked for, and the time limit you want it in, I would expect a semi-professional cartographer to charge you somewhere around $1000.00 USD to start. Then of course, depending on how many changes had to be made it may drive up the price.

Also, not every cartographer likes to do or even CAN do city maps well. They aren't easy.

[Donovan]

Thank you for the feedback. I was trying to provide information to show that fine details were not important, but it sounds like it had the opposite effect.

[arsheesh]

Has this request been fulfilled? If so I'll go ahead and archive this thread.