City of Kasai, hand-drawn map for Paizo Publishing

[Gamerprinter]

While this isn't a new map, rather something I created in 2012, I couldn't previously post it due to Non-Disclosure Agreement reasons, but that was 8 years ago, so no longer an issue. This was a commission I did for Paizo Publishing for The Empty Throne module of the Jade Regent Adventure Path (published 2013). This was also one of three maps included in the Dragon Empires Map Folio, which earned the 2013 Ennie Award for Best Map Product. I had only created the original hand-drawn linework of this map, while Paizo's inhouse cartographer finished the map with colors and labels, so it could better match the other maps of the product.

I posted a tiny screenshot of a portion of this map previously, but the NDA prevented me from posting the full map at the time.

I started by creating the shape of the land, the rivers, the coastline, the canals and the street layout using Xara Designer Pro x11, a vector drawing program. Because I was drawing this at large format, I cut the vector map design into 4 equal pieces 36 x 48 inches and printed on my Canon iPF 760 large format inkjet printer. I taped down each piece onto a glass topped table, then I placed a same sized sheet of 18# transluscent bond paper (cheaper than vellum, but semi-transparent like vellum). I then traced the vector lines, and extrapolated from it. I was drawing at a high speed - 2 buildings per second, including square and rectangular buildings for most, but L-shaped, T-shaped, and open interior court structures 5% of the time. For each 100 buildings I drew, I tried to include a temple or shrine, a cemetery, and a market square. I would draw for 10 minutes straight, then rest my hand for 5 minutes before jumping back to drawing. I got into kind of a Zen mode, drawing quickly, thinking ahead where to add alternate buildings, shrines, markets, etc. The total map took my 4 hours per day, over 4 days. The top right quarter of the map was created 3 months after the rest of it. The author of the module had created the castle and castle grounds and had to provide me a rough draft to finish the map - that's what took so long. Also I used a different kind of pen for that quarter, hence why the lines are thicker there. Also once I complete one quarter of the map, I sent it to Paizo to insure I was meeting their design goals - once they saw it, they doubled my commission.

While I'd have preferred to finish the map in full color, that's not what I was hired for. Because I also wrote the City of Kasai Gazetteer, included in The Empty Throne module, I was credited as a contributing author.

So, long delayed in posting this (I forgot about it until now), here's that hand-drawn map. Enjoy!"

GP

kasai-hand.jpg

[Arimel]

That is a superb amount of detail. WOW. Have you counted the number of small boxes are on this map?

[Gamerprinter]

@Arimel - I only roughly counted it. I counted 1000 actual buildings, then approximated the space taken by the 1000 buildings, and calculated the space available and how many of that sized of area covers the rest of the city. I can approximate that to 8500+ buildings. I'm too sane to try to count them all one at a time, in actuality.

[Arimel]

Hahaha. I actually question your sanity just doing that rough calculation ! That is a lot of buildings though!

[Gamerprinter]

Well only after I began the commission was I told the city is supposed to house approximately 120,000 people, so that meant I needed a lot of buildings, and a basic mimimum of buildings, which is what forced me to count what I did count!