[WIP] The Kingdom of Enisti & Praetor

[patamei]

Hello friends,

Hot off the presses of my last post (The Kingdom of Daimeremos), I wanted to make this thread to track the progress of my next map. This isn't a formal tutorial, but I will share my process for those interested. Mods - if this should be a Blog instead please tell me to delete this and post there, I'm new so I'm not sure of the etiquette!

Years ago I made a map using a tutorial found on this very forum.

Congas Map_georeferenced.png

This original and very crude world map has been corrected innumerable times, but the base coast and general landmasses have guided every subsequent map I've made. In this project, I'm going to be working on updating the island of Enisti, in the west of the above map. This map is given in Equirectangular projection, which is not very true to the shape of the landmasses, since it distorts more dramatically in the horizontal direction the closer we get to the poles. Enisti is around 57-60 degrees North, so it definitely suffers from that.

By georeferencing the base map in QGIS, I can project the map in a more accurate way, and I chose Equidistant Conic. Centering the map on Enisti gives me a jumping off point:
Enisti_Base_Conga.png

We can see there are already a handful of topographical features to work with: a mountain range in the southeast; a single mountain in the northeast; some large lakes; a nice big river; and those lovely big lakes. Considering the position of Enisti in the world, and its distance from a tectonic fault, volcanic activity seems the most likely way the mountain ranges arose. It's also quite convenient as a realistic way of getting one large standalone peak in the north. Iceland is an obvious real-world parallel for the lonely volcanic island, so I'll be drawing a lot of inspiration from that topography. However, given Enisti is quite a bit further south, I won't be putting major ice caps on the island.

Importing the base map into GIMP, I can use the free select tool and zoom to start tracing the coasts. I like doing a rough sketch in GIMP before I break into tiles and hand-draw, because it helps me visualise the terrain, and gives me a good way of iterating into lower and lower detail while still keeping the big picture looking good.

The first pass of the coastal tracing looks like this:
Attachment 128923

[patamei]

Hi all,

There was a few months I had to take a break as a result of some technical difficulties and other priorities, but I'm plugging away now. I note that above, the first pass of coastal tracing attachment hasn't worked properly, so I reattach that here for your reference!
Enisti Land.png

The black is good for a base but hard to keep track of as we go, so I'll convert to my preferred colour scheme now for future detailing:
Enisti Raw Topo 100.png

Using Iceland as heavy inspiration for a large volcanic mid-ocean island (as I mentioned above), I began to select where I thought rivers might form across ancient lava flows, and added some sandurs, or effuvial plains. At this level, and with the overhaul to the detailing being so huge, I'm not too worried about most of it, but I do want to make sure I pay particular attention to the river outlet for the main river running through the island: the Tripaxis River. It and the large lakes will be the primary determinate of how the topography is formed, so care needs to be taken in accommodating for them now to avoid headaches later. The first pass of topography, from 100-200 metres, is then placed down:
Enisti Raw Topo 200.png

This process then basically repeats itself for the majority of the topology, with 200-300 metres helping to further refine the lava flows and major features:
Enisti Raw Topo 300.png

I'll avoid giving you each layer as it happens, since they speak for themselves mostly, but a general reminder that this is a first sketch. From here, as you'll see, each will be broken down into smaller sections and hand-drawn in Procreate to get the detailing right. Hopefully I can spend a bit more time on this one, and provide you with the finished topographical sketch before talking more about detailing.

[patamei]

To add to this, I thought it might be instructive to show a zoom-in of some of the outlying islands to show that even at sketch level there's a big improvement. The thumbnails above aren't really easy to compare since you have to open multiple large images and click between tabs to get a sense.

Praetor Islands - Old.png Praetor Islands - 300.png

[patamei]

After an extended hiatus I've begun tackling this project again, and completed the preliminary sketch
Enisti Raw Topo Sketch.png
It's certainly not perfect but I couldn't stand doing things by mouse and keyboard, so I've called it done and switched over onto my iPad. I'm doing something a bit differently this time which should hopefully make my work stream more efficient: I've installed a screen mirroring software called Astropad Project Blue. I use Inkscape vector software to compile the final piece, but really wanted to draw on my iPad instead of directly on the computer. This software allows me to use my iPad like a drawing tablet for Inkscape directly. This should save a huge amount of time if it works, since I won't need to edit raster files together and then convert them to SVG before re-importing etc etc.

You can see where the lakes will go, and I've shrunk them in size to be a bit more realistic. I think the geography will nicely play into the definition of the history of the nation, which was formerly three countries that united. The mountain ranges and flats should tell a nice story of why these original three formed the way they did.

Hopefully I'll be able to provide more frequent updates now I'm back on the scene with it!

[patamei]

Okay, update. I've now completed one of the section's topography in Vector graphics. This took about 2 hours, which is about right for each segment, but the difference is that (as mentioned above) I can now start merging this with the larger map within the same application. Project Blue crashes a LOT but even the reboots are better than redrawing each section 3 times.

I've come up with this and will stop for today. Any feedback is always welcome, especially this early on.
B3 Topography.png

[Tiluchi]

This looks great overall! Definitely a big improvement over the original map Excited to see the full version!

[patamei]

Update, I've finished the first three tiles, with 8 more on topography to go. Then the actual work begins placing settlements and drawing political boundaries and roads. I'd done this historically per tile but I'm trying it holistically this time. Let's see if that's a fool's errand.

You can compare the topographical sketch I made to the updated version and see the improvements already. I've reduced the saturation on the sketch topography for the updated version so you can see the changes more clearly.
Original
Enisti Raw Topo Sketch.png
Updated
Enisti Raw Topo.png

The stroke formatting isn't 100% consistent but that doesn't matter as they're all separate right now. When I join the SVGs together and merge the paths, they'll unify by design.