The Butcher, The Baker, and that Other Guy

[Ascension]

I wanted to finish this up while I had some time to do so. I came up with names for towns - took the easy way out and picked musical terms that most folks don't really know too well. Naming the terrain features was also fairly simple as I used a translator (Babylon 9) and once I decided to name my desert "The Bakery" I then decided to name my volcanoes "The Candles"...all I needed was a butcher and I had my title so the forest became "The Forest of Butchery". I know my translations are technically incorrect but I didn't have enough space to cram all that text in that some of the languages require so I took some shortcuts. The languages are Swedish, Irish, English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Turkish. The parchment was one of CoyoteMax's that I tweaked out the bright areas. I am bad at drawing ships so I used the Ships n Boats font for those. The only other font on the whole thing is Bouwsma Uncial and since it doesn't have any numbers I had to use Roman numerals for the scale (0, 50, 100, 150, 200, 250). So the parchment, font, and ships are not mine but the drawing and painting are. I wanted to do something nice for the title text but I am also really bad at designing swirlies and swashes; that's also why I didn't do a proper cartouche. The rhumblines, shrug, just something I threw in instead of doing a compass. The color scheme might seem odd but I wanted to use a 19th century palette like they use in the old "bird's eye" style of city maps. It was mainly for practice and learning how to set my layers up a little better (which I failed at miserably ending up with over 100 again because each little icon has 3 layers with it, 4 with text). This version is scaled down to 66% and quality reduced from 12 to 9 to fit the forum limits. The original is 22 x 18 (6600 x 5100) and full quality jpg is 28 megs.

What I learned: work on a smaller canvas when just practicing because it may turn into something huge

What I still need to work on: using less layers, learn to draw boats and swirlies and cartouches, make it all "less busy" which should be easier if working on a smaller canvas.

~A~

[Sapiento]

Great map, full of detail!

[arsheesh]

This is impressive work A! My hat is off to you sir!

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Jaxilon]

Dude, that is awesome. I love how it looks.

I feel you on the making things too big for experimentation - I recently dealt with continuous crashes and slow motion while attempting one of these. In the end I was so frustrated and lost as much work as I accomplished. The lesson I learned was the same as your's, go smaller for experimentation.

At least yours turned out so sweet.

[NeonKnight]

WOW!....simply just wow!

[ravells]

What a glorious map. Glad you finished it. It's got that trademark Ascension small scale!

[Steel General]

Ascension you never cease to amaze me. Very Nice!

[TheRedEpic]

I LOVE this map. Fantastic old world feel, muted colors and excellent design... it actually reminds me of the Medici maps that i saw when i was in Florence. This is truly an inspiring piece of cartography, you never cease to amaze me with your skills! The only thing i find not as fitting for such an individual unique piece such as this, is the repeat use of some of your glyph designs, such as the mine symbol, or the temple things in the mountains. If you could just make them all look slightly different i think it would complete this epic piece. Just my 2 cents of course

~Jared

[jtougas]

Maps like this make me realize that I have no business in this hobby. Truly Awesome !!

[Ramah]

Lovely map, Ascension.

Glad you changed the roads from the little dots. They stand out a lot better now.