Island of Biringan

[KMAlexander]

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In 2023, G. P. Putnam's Sons (Penguin imprint) commissioned me to do a map for Melissa de la Cruz's THE ENCANTO'S DAUGHTER, a YA fantasy romance heavily inspired by Filipino folklore.
The book is out now (it has been for a while; this is long overdue), and I can talk about it! This is a two-page spread with a gutter.

I wrote a post with a bunch of details that are easy to miss at first glance. If you want to see all the weird little things I scatter through the map, it's worth checking out.

The brief wanted me to evoke the feel of early 18th-century Spanish colonial maps, which is very much in my wheelhouse. Four faerie courts rule the island, each representing a season—weather and its effects aren't something typical in maps from that time period. Still, I think I represented them well without being heavy-handed. The passage from our world to the island is never fully explained and left nebulous. It took me a while to figure out a direction, but in the end, I had fun illustrating, and I think it adds a bit of magic to the work.

Anyway, thought you all would enjoy seeing it. Happy to answer any questions.

[Turambar]

Great map, well done! I especially like how the Biringan passage comes out of the map at the viewer.

[KMAlexander]

That was a tough one to tackle, as it's left pretty nebulous in the book. They were happy with my solution, however. I think it adds a bit of magic.

[Ilanthar]

Great map, once again. You're making good use of the elements you crafted. If I had a nitpick, it would be about the coastal waters, I would probably fade it a tad toward the seas.

[GrimFinger]

1. My eyes greet this map with enthusiasm. There's a certain "wow factor" that accompanies my eyes, when I click on it to zoom in closer to it. No doubt that whole Market District provides a very strong center of visual gravity.

2. Rendered in grayscale, of sorts, it has no real color variety or visual pizzazz caused by reliance on color going for it, yet even still, it has quite lot going for it. This is no visual pauper of a map.

3. The huge flow of water flowing right off the map is a very nice visual touch. The lettering of BIRINGAN PASSAGE, along with the angles of those labels, really helps draw the eye there and stay in that neck of this map's visual woods.

4. When I just sit and state and scroll this map, scale is the word that comes to mind. Things on this map have a nice scale to them, visually speaking. My eyes just want to keep on wandering all over it.

5. Those heraldic escutcheons just make my heart proud. But as large as they are compared to everything else around them, they accentuate the map, and do not spell visual doom for the rest of the map's many, many features.

6. Your use of text is timely. The text is very easy on the eyes. Ah, just looks at the curves of the PRINSESA RIVER! So visually dainty. I've no complaints to voice where your font choice is concerned. You are a man who knows how to apply text to a map. Here, there's visual variety, where text application is concerned, but you don't yield to the temptation to overdo it, unlike many who overplay their resort to textual excesses.

7. Your shading around the coastlines, including the islands, really underscores this map's visual strength.

8. Neither your compass rose nor your map's border win no awards from me, but your cartographic touch with this Island of Biringan map with its tall mountains, its fields, its forests, its roads, its villages, and its lovely Lake Reyna prove that this map is greater than the sum of its individual visual parts.

9. That Old Bumara Wall, though - ::sigh::

The wall, itself, doesn't look bad, but I am at a loss to explain it to myself. It ends well, visually, on the right side of it, but the left side of it looks amiss to me. It doesn't seem to visually "fit," as you have laid it out. What doe sit guard? What does it seek to separate? Clearly, none of the more notable locations on this map. But what do I know? I've never visited this realm, before.

10. The hills on the right hand side are a visual lovefest. Talon Falls is a visual darling, an apple of my cartographic-loving eye.