Rune RPG Commission - World Map (Heimfold)

[Caenwyr]

Hi everyone!

First of all: Happy New Year!! I hope you spent the holidays among your loved ones, and I wish all of you a splendid 2018!

Alright. Those of you who recognise my name might notice I've been absent from the forum for a few months. Reason is, I've been working on a pretty extensive commission that was under an NDA until January 1st, 2018. With that now out of the way, I'm very happy (and more than a bit proud) to present to you the series of maps I created for a game called Runes, the Tabletop RPG™.

I'll be doing this in a few updates per map to show my progress, after which I'll publish each map in the Finished section as well. First map in this sequence: the World Map!

[Caenwyr]

A fun way to start this thread is to show you the sketch provided by the client. It was a very elaborate sketch actually, with tons of information already provided. The client was also very active in providing more information or background for the different locations on the map. All in all it was a really great experience.

The client's initial sketch:
World Map.jpg

A lot of back-and-forth with the client resulted in this as a first outline:
Rune_RPG_0a_small.jpg

Upon approval of this draft, I elaborated it further into this advanced sketch:
Rune_RPG_0b_small.jpg

And that's that for the preparatory stages! The next post will give an overview of the final linework.

[Caenwyr]

Alright. Now the prep stages are done, it's off to the line work!

First off, the coastline, in full A4 resolution this time:
Heimfold 1.jpg

Followed by mountains and hills:
Heimfold 3.jpg

Rivers, and a backdrop for the water bodies:
Heimfold 4b.jpg

And finally, at least in the line work department, the forests and other vegetation markers:
Heimfold 5b.jpg

The map is slowly starting to come together!

Next up: shading and greyscale colouring.

[Diamond]

Gorgeous work, Caenwyr! Great job with the forests; I love how they kind of lap up against the mountains (which are awesome also).

[Caenwyr]

Hey thanks Diamond! Glad you like it!

In my previous post I said I would post an update with colouring and (greyscale) shading next. So here we go:

Heimfold 7.jpg

What do you guys think?

[Azélor]

It looks pretty good. Nothing bad to say about it.

[Naen]

I really like your mountains, shading, and forests. Looks very nice.

[Caenwyr]

It looks pretty good. Nothing bad to say about it.

Haha thanks Azelor, glad you like it!

I really like your mountains, shading, and forests. Looks very nice.

I'm happy to hear that Naen. I'm glad you like the mountains - those bastards generally take me a LOT of time but I love detailing them. It's a work of love!

Alright, off to the final stages for this map then.

First I tackled the labelling:
Heimfold 8.jpg

And then I finished it all up with a compass rose, a scale, a legend, a minimap and some ornamental surroundings such as a frame, some celestial bodies and a nice little vignette:
Heimfold 9.jpg

And that's it people. Be sure to let me know what you think!

[QED42]

The map looks really awesome! You've done a great job translating it into something very beautiful looking.

[ThomasR]

Another fantastic piece ! If I had one comment to make it's that a little variation here and there to the sea would make it less computer-y (and it's only slightly computer-y in my eye).