The New Empire - WIP

[Coyotemax]

Yay! I'm back on the tablet again! Life is starting to sort itself out a bit, and perfect timing - I was provided with another opportunity for a commissioned map.

This one will be based off a set of maps that was provided as reference for a published novel. We're going for the antique hand-drawn look again, and I expect to be heavily influenced by the work I did on the Barovia and Transylvania maps when all is said and done (in turn heavily influenced by the maps of Joan Blaeu).

I had a few false starts, the most promising of which seemed to be a layout in which I had the mainland in one area, the island in another, and and an inset showing them in relation to each other (a fullsize map using the provided scale at their relative locations would have a great deal of empty space). Sounds great in theory, I just couldn't get it to look right in practice. So I fell back on the multiple-page original presentation and added a divider

The land masses will be completely redone by hand, the current incarnation is scanned in from the appendix and placed for reference. there will be minimal adjustments to coastlines and mountains, and the political borders will stay more or less as they are.

I'll likely work over the parchment layer a bit more, but the inked portions will stay as one colour. Oh, and the whole thing is being done at 300dpi to be printed at 16x22" - the largest hand-drawn style map I've done to date I'll probably shrink down the WIP updates after this.

Feel free to offer suggestions on things I seem to be missing (though it might be a bit early for that now). I'm likely to go over the palace in the middle to give it a more hand-drawn feel (though I think it's got a good start considering it was originally a photograph) and may go so far as to draw over the larger labels too.