Map designer needed for non-commercial, personal project

[Layatha]

I am looking for a cartographer with a good understanding of geography to transform my rough ideas from blobs on a map into a believable landscape.
The current draft of my map is simply this https://imgur.com/nQqJJKo and I'd love for someone to translate my rough ideas for terrain into something believable and, well, pretty. Outside of the terrain as noted you have full reign over other aspects of the geography, and I'd be happy to work creatively together with the designer. Map is roughly inspired by Greek and Italian geography.

I realise this might be more work than creating a fully fleshed out map someone else might be commissioning. I'd be happy to discuss further details and answer questions about this at any point of the creation process.

Style
Style of the map is also completely open to the designer, however, a black/white image would be preferred to fully rendered colour.

Quality, Size and Time
Size requirement is simply a digital image used as a reference for my own writing and will never be used printed or displayed in large scale. No time constraints, but I'd prefer to start the work in January instead of this late into the year.

Copyright
As map will only be used privately and will mostly be for my own eyes only, and you'd be a larger contributor to the creation of the details of the map, I'd be happy to discuss this with you as future designer. I am quite unfamiliar with how copyright for commission images work.

Contact
Please reach me via sarahfuenke -a-t--- g_mail dot c_om. I'd be happy to discuss further details, but as this is a private project I have to carefully budget, please indicate a rough price for your commission work (in the past, maybe) with your email.

Thank you very much!

[Tiana]

I realise this might be more work than creating a fully fleshed out map someone else might be commissioning. I'd be happy to discuss further details and answer questions about this at any point of the creation process.

Depends on the cartographer. I take on a lot of very rough beginnings where my clients ask me to fill in details, make up names, terrain, and otherwise populate the surroundings for their stories. Generally settings where they've put a lot of thought into one or two key locations featured in a story to this point, so they have a few anchoring themes and ideas.

There are some cartographers here I would point to before myself if "geography expert" is what you want. They are high end professionals whose services don't come cheap, because they're not just making **** up, but doing a lot of complex foundational work to make a world that functions. They're the "hard science fiction" of cartographers. Namia and Azelor both come to mind, but I'm sure they're not the only intense world functionality nerds.

Speaking for myself, I specialize in being a creative fount. I'm good at making up a ton of stuff for people to play with, churning out fantasy building blocks and creative prompts based in the world. If you just want a pile of pretty bonus details made up to fill in the gaps and inspire you rather than a scientifically viable world, I'm down. Some of my favorite art has been a result of clients asking me to just make stuff up around their themes. I would appreciate a later January start though, because such a creation ideally involves preemptive brainstorming of a slightly greater level than a map that starts with a detailed sketch. There would be at least a few emails back and forth about what inspires you and the world besides just "Greek and Italy" since my goal is to capture and distill the essence of your world and your writing into a visual piece.

I have a few pieces in my portfolio that I think demonstrate what happens when someone really collaborates with me and lets me do what I do best.

A black and white map for a novel. Dralderth: the Dragon Realms. This one was made to go into a book, as if drawn by someone in the universe. This map was commissioned for $150 USD.
The Perilim, a black and white map for a DnD 5e campaign, this was a reward for the players for a quest completion, and drawn in character as a person in universe again. This map was commissioned for $220 USD. Both of these pieces were smaller print sizes for non-professionals and you would expect a similar quote for a black and white map at a screen resolution or smaller print size, my rates for black and white maps haven't shifted for a while as they take me quite a predictable amount of time.

If you're hoping for a master geographer, though, I would call myself more of a creative cartography illustrator than someone with a deep scientific knowledge of the geography of the world. I'm not sure which direction you're angling with for "geographic control". I might be able to help you, I might not. Cheers.

[Lord Zuol]

I am interested myself, but I work with colored maps using the Inkarnate program. I'm in the early testing for their new update so they've improved a lot of stuff. Updating a map as you've provided wouldn't be too terrible.

I'm more of a hobbyist than a professional though.

[Eri]

Hi Layatha -Happy to work with you as well to create your world map. Like the Cartographers here I have a good knowledge of environments and terrain to make a more natural realistic land-form although, obviously not close to those of the real masters of geography here.
You can see a basis of my work and general pricing over on my website. - https://corruptedquill.com/maps/

[TheDwarf]

Hi Layatha,

I'm interested in your project.
If you are still looking for an artist please check my samples in the following link:

My shop at Etsy