The Tentivu Tetrarchy [WIP]

[Caenwyr]

I barely published my map of Tandalorn in the finished section, and I'm back with a new commission. Tentivu is a large continent dominated by a culture all about cardinal directions and the four elements. There's ten countries spread over four kingdoms - one for each element. The geographic extreme points of each kingdom (north, east, south and west) are of special significance.

I'm not sure how much I can post on the backstory, however, so I'm mostly going to limit myself to the cartographic aspect of it.

The client provided me with the following sketch:
WIP Map_2.png

As you can see it's a very rich world, with tons of places and hinting at all sorts of hidden knowledge. The trick is now to turn this into a map that is as awesome as possible. This is my first sketch:

Tentivu_2_small.jpg

So! What do you think?

[Matthew VE]

Looks great so far, love the sketch.

[DanielHasenbos]

I agree with Matthew, the sketch is looking promising and the idea behind the map sounds cool too.

-Dan

[Matthew VE]

That was actually Josiah who posted that message accidentally (he didn't notice it was my account that was logged in, it's happened more than once )

But I too am very excited to see this develop! I like the shape of the land a lot, it's very interesting.

Matthew

[Tiluchi]

Love the sketch! Looking forward to seeing what this turns into.

[ThomasR]

The continent shape is great and I'm particularily fond of the strings of islands. I'd say go for it !

[Caenwyr]

Some minor changes to the borders and the coastline requested by the client, a splash of colour, a sketchy layout proposal and a massive bundle of Ley lines radiating out of the extremities of the continent.

Tentivu_3_small_fieldlines.jpg

Still fully in the sketch stage though - next step is to get the linework going in earnest.

Thoughts?

[Voolf]

You amaze me how fast you work on those maps, one after another. Not much to say yet, except maybe the border is great and just love the compass.... oustanding

Ok seriously, i will wait for the linework to say more. Keep up.

[Abu Lafia]

That's a great start Caenwyr! I like the overall layout with the heraldic shields on the left. One nitpick would be, that the coastline gives sort of an "oscillating" impression between an isometric and (flat) top down perspective, especially around the "extremities" of the continent and the chains of islands. It's not that big of a deal though. Keep up the great work!

[Caenwyr]

You amaze me how fast you work on those maps, one after another. Not much to say yet, except maybe the border is great and just love the compass.... oustanding

bc7.png
You're making me blush! (I'm just gonna pretend you weren't joking and keep the border and the compass! Hee hee!)

That's a great start Caenwyr! I like the overall layout with the heraldic shields on the left. One nitpick would be, that the coastline gives sort of an "oscillating" impression between an isometric and (flat) top down perspective, especially around the "extremities" of the continent and the chains of islands. It's not that big of a deal though. Keep up the great work!

I think I know what you mean Abu Lafia. Might it be caused by the fact that the coastline seems to be done in top-down perspective, while the sketchy mountains are are viewed from the side? I've been thinking of remedying this by first stretching the map vertically and drawing the coasts, and then bringing it back to its original size. That's the way I've been doing my rivers for a while now, giving them this isometric feel, so it would make sense to do the same for the coasts...

I'm not gonna perform that trick in this map (mostly because I've already inked and partly squigglied the coastline and I'm too lazy to go back, but also because this map's quite huge, and my computer would probably buckle under the weight of an even larger stretched file), but I'll try to take care of it in shading and squigglying (I'm never gonna stop using that word!). This has worked wonders in the past, so the "oscillations" you talked about should be gone by that stage anyway. Still, it's something I should consider for my future maps to really get that sideways view to perfection! Thanks for pointing it out!