November/December 2015 Challenge: Mikscifonia

**xpian** · 12-06-2015, 05:39 PM

Chashio and I have teamed up for this year's "Challenge a Guilder" challenge. It's exciting to be back in the challenge race, after having to skip many of these months due to other demands.

Here is the intriguing brief I was given, followed by a little clarification after I'd asked a few questions:

Initial Description:
"Greyscale or black & white, though color is okay if you want to go that route.
Terrain and features drawn however you want except top down.
Setting is an island or a valley.
Scale of the setting is mostly similar to Ireland, occasionally larger than Brazil, and, once (due to extreme and extenuating circumstances which I will not detail here) smaller than a breadbox.
It is usually inhabited by things very normal and very peculiar, though it's often hard to tell which is which. There are sometimes monsters.
I don't have any particular labels in mind, so feel free to either leave it blank or have as much fun as possible to bring it to life."

Supplemental Details:
"Yes, free to make labels. Quirky, fun, witty, backwards, or long-winded with overall panache is more what I'm thinking of to provide a rich, descriptive personality to the setting.

You don't have to draw up monsters or creatures unless you want to. That was just a prompt to give you a feel for the setting.

The setting changes size and shape (perhaps a good analogy would be the stock market?) and Ireland is the approximate norm where it balances out so that would work well, but you might consider having more than one scale on the map to illustrate that it changes, and perhaps even different types of scales.

An island would be great.

If you think top-down would work better to illustrate and describe this setting, go for it, but ... meh. The immediate picture-ability of ISO, etc, often goes a long way. Do what you think best.

Color is fine.

Have fun with it and interpret as you like.

Oh, there is one other thing I forgot to mention. Compasses that point north are pretty rare in this setting, or perhaps a better term is defunct. Due to the changeable nature of the size and shape of the landscape, compass-makers do most of their business with destination-based pieces. They've been trying to make a universal compass but there are certain issues with that conundrum that are tricky to circumvent and a good deal of problems have occurred in the past with black market devices... that I won't detail here."

Therefore, I present: Mikscifonia, the mysterious island of troublesome scale.

A coastal outline to start the process:
### Latest WIP ###
Dec2015_Challenge_v1.png

**Chashio** · 12-07-2015, 12:25 AM

Great start, xpian! I love the shapes in the landmass and the title is just right (kind of curious, did you pull inspiration from somewheres for that or ?). I'm really excited to see how you develop this.