Sarifal map for Dragon 376

[Schley]

Hey Guys,
I know it's been a long time since I've posted here but I've been crazy busy lately. No rest for the weary I guess.

Anyways, here's one of my more recent maps done for WotC's 4E Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. Anyone familiar with the Moonshae Isles will recognize the area mapped and hopefully will get a kick out of the level of detail I included. The Realmslore article this appears in is titled Sarifal and the author, Brian R. James, did and incredible job fleshing out it's tasty tasty flavor. You can check out his website at Loremaster.org.

We also worked jointly on the Cormyr Realmslore article for Dragon a while back and will hopefully be tapped for many more Realmslore articles in the future since we seem to complement each other like peanut butter and chocolate.

Some of the stylistic choices I made for both this and the Cormyr map were influenced by previos Forgotten Realms cartography. For instance, the heavy use of colored inks and the hill illustration style. Beyond that though I generally tried to shoot for a map that incorporated a high level of detail without becoming busy or confusing. This can be seen in the way I illustrated the submerged features like the reefs where the pallet stays close in value and hue to the color used for the shallow water areas.

The entire map (Other than the rough provided by the author) was produced in Photoshop CS3 with a Wacom tablet and took about 4 days to complete. Typically I'll flesh out the finished inks and text before working on any color application. The process is actually very similar to the way comics are digitally inked and colored.

Well, let me know what you think. Crits are, as always, greatly appreciated.

Mike