January 2020 - The Inhabited Lands of Arlis

[Tiana]

My first map, done in October/November 2006 Nanowrimo.
my first map-small.jpg

The 2020 revision.
### Latest WIP ###
Arlis-redo2020.jpg

I would say I definitely had many Tolkien influences still present in my creativity at this time, though I was beginning to make the push towards my own thing I was only just beginning to write non-fanfiction when I sketched this map to write my novel that year. It was about the last survivor from Dawn making his way through the elf lands with the aid of a compassionate elf (most of the rest were racist xenophobes) to the shore where he could potentially find others of his people and defeat Midnight with the aid of an enormous mechanism which was never fully explained but may have been a buried space ship. There was a definite technological decline and there was an entire race of dwarves which basically no longer existed.

I have not processed it yet but I did screen record the creation of this map, except for the last few tooling around photoshoppy type layers I did. Most of the rest of the work was done in Other World Mapper.

[Bogie]

Great mountains!

[Domino44]

Awesome! Another map for this challenge! The icons are very cool and sci-fi which I love. I'm looking forward to seeing this ones progress!

[ScottDA]

Very nice. I love the color scheme.

[Tiana]

Thanks, Bogie, Domino, and ScottDA. I too like the colors. I tend to use purple when I make maps for my own settings. I'm not sure if anything else will be done to this map, though I'm not 100% satisfied with it yet and would like to do some painting over it to smooth the stamps I used and I'm not satisfied with the cheap way I attempted to make it look like 'a shadow is washing over the land from the north' by using a motion blur overlay. I love the color scheme and sci-fi icons I created, but the elvish icons need to have vines added, since they're all in the forest, and I want the human city icons to all have a sort of decay going on that isn't present in the basic OWM Sci Fi stamp kit.

We'll see. I got 3-5 maps remaining with January deadlines. If I add anything to it before the end of the contest, I will post it here. If not, I'll post it later in the Finished Maps section.

[Ilanthar]

Intriguing "alien" look. Very unusual but also really pleasant and interesting.

[- JO -]

Judging by the map, the novel must be a good one to read !
Bold choice of colors, but it's consistent !

[Tiana]

### Latest WIP ###
Arlis-redo2020-2.jpg

Thanks, Ilanthar, "alien" is what I was going for, I often combine both elements of fantasy and science fiction and the color scheme evokes exactly what I wanted from the setting notes.

JO, yes, I am committed to my colors being unusual when I do my own work, though I do more modest maps for clients on request too... this is just a reflection of what's in my head for my own worlds. I wrote the book at 16 and didn't finish it so I would say it probably had good ideas but was misdirected... if I were to redo it now I might just go ahead and make it full science fiction rather than also layering in a racial war between elves and dwarves and all that High Fantasy stuff I really wanted to lift from Lord of the Rings... which I loved back then so much and inspired me to make this map.

[Falconius]

This looks great! I love the town illustrations (as well as pretty much every other thing there).

[Tiana]

This looks great! I love the town illustrations (as well as pretty much every other thing there).

Thanks! I also like the towns, they're suitably weird and kind of like steampunky sci-fi with their own little things going on.

I added a bit of like... 'blight' and some lighting to the two blue buildings, which I had not yet added lighting to in the previous draft.

Arlis-redo2020-2.jpg