January 2016 Challenge: Barsoom

[Chick]

After years of reading Burroughs as a child, and years teaching Mars geology in my Planetary Geology class, there couldn't be any other choice for me for this. Barsoom it is!

Besides that, I have long wanted to do a map of the double circle two hemisphere style, so this is the perfect excuse to do it.

So I fit a modern Mars map to the two hemispheres, drew in some boundaries for the Barsoom territories, did a little additional texturing and coloring, and here is the start of my map.

I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to put in the outside regions currently black.....

### Latest WIP ###
Barsoom 05.jpg

[Bogie]

Great map Chick! I was also thinking of doing a John Carter map, but it would be a much smaller scale than this.
I also read a lot of ERB when I was young but got away from sci-fi / fantasy in High School and College. It was during my junior year in college that I stumbled across Tarzan at the Earth's Core and got hooked again. The crossover novel between the Tarzan books and the Pelucidar series was great. I wish ERB had done a Tarzan / Mars crossover. Imagine Tarzan wrestling the 4 armed white apes!

[Diamond]

Yay! An entry!

Nice start on this, Chick.

[johnvanvliet]

if anyone wants some references
i have a few OLD mars maps , mostly from the 1800 and 1900's .
and from " Brenner" and "schiapparelli"
https://picasaweb.google.com/1026959...centMapsOfMars

[Chick]

if anyone wants some references
i have a few OLD mars maps , mostly from the 1800 and 1900's .
and from " Brenner" and "schiapparelli"
https://picasaweb.google.com/1026959...centMapsOfMars

That's really great, thank you, John!! I've tried the canali map on top of mine, but it didn't look all that good against the modern real Mars. It's very cool though to see the history of attempting to map Mars from afar.

[Chick]

Here is my latest effort. I even took a whack at drawing the Roman god Mars, for those of you who like a good laugh

### Latest WIP ###
Barsoom 10.jpg

Comments, suggestions, and critiques always welcome!

[J.Edward]

Mars doesn't look too bad Chick.
My suggestion would be to have those white polar areas back behind the outer rings.
I think it will look better.
And one other thing - if you can color match Terra-Mars-Luna to be closer to the color of Mars/Barsoom.
I think that would look better, but that's just my opinion on the color.

[xpian]

I agree with J.Edward about the ice caps - they definitely need to be behind any elements of the map framing.

[Chick]

I agree with J.Edward about the ice caps - they definitely need to be behind any elements of the map framing.

...My suggestion would be to have those white polar areas back behind the outer rings...

Darn. And I thought it gave an unusual and kind of unique look to bring an element of the map out over part of the frame, more like an old hand-drawn map with the snow added as an afterthought. Oh well, so much for trying to be creative ... thanks for your comments.

[J.Edward]

I think if it had hard outlines that might have worked.
With it being translucent and diffuse it doesn't have the same effect.
There's nothing wrong with the idea but the execution would need to be different I think.