The Island Kingdom of Dannasis

[Coyotemax]

I started this map before I became a forum member here, starting from a basic tutorial I found on another site. While the final version contains almost nothing of the original tutorial, it was a great starting point, and inspired me towards what we see now. I originally intended this to be no more than a simple wallpaper for my laptop which is why it has the small image size compared to most on here. I kept adding to it and tweaking it, eventually joined the forum here and recieved some very valuable feedback that elevated this from a wallpaper to something I'm proud to show others

It was created entirely in photoshop, with the embellishments brought in from a variety of antique maps found while searching the web for inspiration. The font is AquilineTwo as found on dafonts.com, the only font I found that perfectly matched the styles I'd seen on many antique maps. Typically it is set to 12px, with a few things at 14px for subtle effect.

The map took me approximately 6 days to construct, including the time from the first tutorial (I used the same PSD file throughout, so I count it as all one take) with working sessions between 4 to 14 hours (I lost track of time quite often).

There was no particular story during most of the creation process, but I couldn't help thinking about the political intrigues as I was working on naming the towns and features. This led me to consider the minimal force approach used to quell recent uprisings by the newly coronated King Maxwell. Many of the populace were concerned about him being a fit ruler, with a long list of bardic tales recounting his misspent and often violent youth. However, with the recent passing of his father, he appears to have set aside his past and taken to governing with a firm but fair hand. Time will tell if this is a continued trend...