Nice work. I love the colors in both sets of images (from the first post), but for different reasons.
The lighter color scheme looks great and makes me think more of an atlas. I definitely like the projection-style map. My only suggestion there might be to lighten up the forests, they seem to contrast a little too much with the more muted colors in the rest of the map.
The darker map is gorgeous, and the vivid colors are great. If you can come up with a good color scheme for labeling it, I'd want to print it out as a full-size poster and hang it on the wall.
Repped