The Colonization of New World Island

[IronJaw]

Howdy y'all. I signed up on your fine forum over a year and ago and apparently haven't posted since that initial hello. Whoops. I've still been lurking and still making maps. I wanted to post one that I've recently completed that I really enjoyed making. This will be a little more modern than most of the concepts on here but it was for a specific purpose. I used parts of the Saderan tutorial (not sure who it's by) to create this.

New World Island grew as a medium for creating sports concepts. I wanted to build a small undiscovered continent-like land where it was settled and grew exponential in a later era, similar to the USA and Australia, so that the more modern cities it developed would have a craving for modern sports, particularly baseball and football. You could consider it to be a miniature Australia with a decidedly more American influence than British. I took inspiration from both places though. The full map is pretty busy so I presented several other looks as well. Hopefully they look OK, I work with massive file sizes so I had to scale down pretty hard to get them on here. There is more information about the colonies below.

Full Map:
NWI2full2.png

Geographic:
NWI2fullgeo.png

Political:
NWI2provs.png

A look at the Queenstown Metropolitan area:
Queensland Metro.png

I enjoy feedback, so please don't hold back. I have several other maps in the works and I like to have an idea of what I can do better. Thanks for checking out this project!


In 1779, after hearing about the success of the fledgling United States, a diverse group of colonists from all over the known world set out to find new lands. They discovered a large island territory with a vast range of terrain and landscapes. From the original landing point in a southeastern bay, later to become Walling Bay and the large city of Queenstown, the group were set into pairs to explore and claim land tracts for new settlements and provinces. These groups of men later became the founding fathers for each of the fifteen territories that became provincial states. A more centralized location was elected as a center of government for the Colonies where law and order could be established and communication between provinces maintained. By 1940, the lands were thriving and the main metropolises were growing rapidly.

Because of the more modern and heavily populated quality to this project, I focused on the metropolitan areas of the largest cities and towns and the infrastructure that connects them. Each city was given one American plus one Euro or Aussie city comparison for texture on the city's demographics and general flavor. Larger interstate highways connect the metros and smaller highways connect the towns. An industrial railway system was added. I imagined it to be one of the last undiscovered and settled lands so it kept the rather bland name of New World Island and instead focused on an Australian style central government. The provinces are very much independent though and often make their own decisions. There is no unified leader such as a president or prime minister but every provincial official is allowed to weigh in and vote on matters of national importance. There are five distinct political parties. There is some competition between provinces but overall they exist in peace.

[QED42]

Awesome maps!

I'm new to map making but my feed back would be that on the first map that you could probably look at the text again as there seems to be a lot that is overlapping or close together, it gets a little confusing.

Also I think your mountains could look a bit more mountainous (for lack of a better term). I'm not sure how big you envisage the mountain ranges being on your continent but to me they lack a little in grandeur, they look more like hills than imposing natural barriers. Of course it depends how you imagined them but that was my reaction to them.

[Mouse]

A magnificent effort, and overall an attractive set of maps.

There are a couple of places in the first map where the labels seem to overlap. They are also just a tiny bit hard to read. You might consider using a dark glow on them to lift them clear of the map. It wouldn't need to be more than just subtle to make a whole lot of difference

[IronJaw]

Awesome maps!

I'm new to map making but my feed back would be that on the first map that you could probably look at the text again as there seems to be a lot that is overlapping or close together, it gets a little confusing.

Also I think your mountains could look a bit more mountainous (for lack of a better term). I'm not sure how big you envisage the mountain ranges being on your continent but to me they lack a little in grandeur, they look more like hills than imposing natural barriers. Of course it depends how you imagined them but that was my reaction to them.

Thanks! I appreciate the feedback. I didn't imagine it to be particularly mountainous so they're not too imposing, but I did feel the same way so mountains have been something I've been working on to better show depth and such.

A magnificent effort, and overall an attractive set of maps.

There are a couple of places in the first map where the labels seem to overlap. They are also just a tiny bit hard to read. You might consider using a dark glow on them to lift them clear of the map. It wouldn't need to be more than just subtle to make a whole lot of difference

Thanks! Good note RE the dark glow, I had tried strokes and wasn't pleased with the result.

Yeah I realize the first map is pretty busy. I'm still noticing areas where labels overlap. I don't usually keep all of the layers open while I'm working so that's something to be aware of more in the future.


Thanks for the feedback guys, every little bit helps!