Domnio Spes'Boscoso

[jbgibson]

... aka Kingdom of the Two Grizzlies

Finishing a contest map i barely got started in time....

Refer to the "map an island" lite contest: Oct / Nov '17 Lite Challenge: Domnio Spes'Boscoso . When I left off there, my progress was like so:

EllefSea8-B.jpg

[Ilanthar]

Interesting start, I like the land shapes.

[jbgibson]

Thanks, Ilanthar! Can't beat real shapes for plausibility, even when the scale is way different :-).

Further background...

Within the Kingdom of the Two Grizzlies the two major parts are Domnio Spes’Boscoso - the island, and Domnio Ter’cuprica - the end of the adjacent peninsula. They have a couple of minor overseas dependencies and possessions around the Ellef Sea that I’ll name and detail when I get around to them.

What’s keeping me motivated beyond the Island Oct/Nov Lite Contest is the in-head world building I’ve done... the situation & society seem to ask me to spin some stories. This dual kingdom is uniquely provisioned with shipbuilding materials AND they choose to sell ships to all and sundry rather than trying to conquer and dominate. I can’t remember fiction with that underlying premise, and I’d like to explore the inherent what-ifs.

Say the date the map depicts is circa 1600AP. Some of my explanations I’ll cast in an ‘omniscient observer’ view from hundreds of years later - call it a wiki or encyclopedia. Others I’ll show as ‘in-story’ vignettes.

Enciklopedija Empirijska 2240

Ellef Sea

Main article >

That body of water between the continents of Norchallica and Sugjeria, connecting to the Madremer del Tempo to the east.

Ellef Sea Civilization

Main article >

The nations and peoples centered on the Ellef Sea from c. 1300AP to 1900AP, having begun as colonies from elder nations across the Madremer del Tempo and generally marked as ended by the Forty Years’ War of 1906-1945AP or the Three Years’ Winter of 1905-1909AP. Replaced the prior North Sugjerian Hunter Gatherers, coexisted with then replaced the Mounted Horde, superseded by the Arxtanizan Empire and Latter Norchallican Migrants.


Lots of worldbuilding detail winds up being “who cares” TL;DR that only an author or cartographer needs to see. I’ll title mostly-background posts ‘worldbuilding’ so you can skip if you only care about map progress.

[jbgibson]

This is why one shows a WIP *in progress*.... so you good Guilders can benefit from my missteps :-). So I added nation names, distinguished by being in all-caps, to one of the physical sheets I'm lettering on, scanned it, and composited it. Which made immediately apparent - if I'm shooting for a thematic map showing the import/export patterns on the seas then all those capes and bays' names make it WAY too busy. Pffft. I guess then I must be building TWO maps, one with more political/geographical detail, one with the resource movements. If I separate off at least the capes and bays to another layer, I can still DO that lettering now. Having them in place to refer to lets me better place incidental political labels that need to go on the water, so the later political/physical map won't need to move a bunch of text.

EllefSea8-D.jpg

More goofs - I see I made some northern nation labels in mixed case Sigh. Some I can repurpose by cutting and pasting w/ leading C. to make 'em capes :-). Some I'll just re-letter. The hand lettering actually isn't taking me long, it's the re-scanning and re-sizing and re-compositing that'll take a while. <shrug> That's why I am doing at least bits of later steps instead of ALL lettering then ALL scanning then ALL compositing. I started to write Kheprit in mixed case, then restarted in SmallCaps... the joys of being able to digitally edit the result :-). If I *really* don't like something I letter i can redo-redo-redo till it looks good, right next to the goof. I used to be SO scared to letter in ink atop some already-done artwork.

I see there's a 'font size' mismatch between earlier labels and later ones. That says i need a better guide-line method than hand-holding a couple of pencils yea far apart. I may have to go high-tech and <gasp> rubber-band them together at a fixed size! Or maybe multiple sizes. Or find my ancient drafting tools and see if there isn't a two-lead compass therein. Size isn't a fatal thing - I have those sheets scanned and their original digital size is about 5x what I'm using - "all" I have to do is resize 'em to ?25%? instead of 19%.....

This workflow probably horrifies those of you who whip out a map of this scope in eight or ten hours. Personally I'm enjoying the tactile involvement of doing stuff by hand, and if the heat death of the universe occurs before i get done, so what? Will I care in that case? No. :-)

I see some eastern labels tilted too - I can rotate to level at 'full' size and won't get much artifacts when downsized. I'm using an in-story aesthetic where labels are horizontal unless there's a reason to curve or tilt them - to fit among features, or to show possession across an expanse of territory. Ohwhatacoincidence that's a typical Earthly best practice too! Who'd 'a thunk it?

See those guide lines that made it through the scanning - and sometimes through the flood-erase-blue-and-white step? On an astounding number of circa 17th century maps the cartographer left visible guide lines on the printed product. Or the engraver did it? I have only a hazy idea of the real life workflow of getting maps to print hundreds of years ago. I assume there was a bunch of drawing and lettering *on paper* that then got transferred to a printing plate by hand? Or did cartographers work in reverse straight on copper plates? <yikes!> Anybody got a concise explanation for us inexpert types?

I'm not going to letter anything straight across gaps between sheets of paper - especially at corners. So you see where I drew in the D. Ter'cuprica name out in the water? Digitally moving it onto land is easy, and doing it right nearby visually lets me keep it the right size/angle to fit on land when moved.

You can see some names creeping in that are not based on butchered Italian :-).... these Ellef Sea states descend from numerous overseas colonizers to the east, which had distinct languages. I know maps often use 'translations' into their host language - but sometimes the exotic outlander names are left intact. What with all the trade going on among Ellef Sea nations, I'm going to say they have a pretty cosmopolitan tolerance for not-my-language orthography & pronunciation.