Map Project: The Eastern Territory: 100% Done!

[Hotrod]

Damn, there goes another hundred bucks

Looks great.

Is that how much your prints cost? How do you get them done?

That's how much it costs for the A0 print on the special mapping paper in full colour.

I take them to a local printing shop. I might try a full gloss one as well this time now that the roleplaying room is ready enough.

Wow! I knew you were going big, but wow! That is an absolutely epic print size! I'm both a little nervous and intrigued to know how it looks at that size. It would come out to what, 75-80 dots per inch? That's got to look pixellated up close; how far back do you have to stand to have the lines look clean?

When your RP room is all put together, please post a photo. I'd love to see how you do this display.

On a related note, the printer is taking in more dough for printing these things than I am for making them!

[kiralon]

Damn, there goes another hundred bucks

Looks great.

Is that how much your prints cost? How do you get them done?

That's how much it costs for the A0 print on the special mapping paper in full colour.

I take them to a local printing shop. I might try a full gloss one as well this time now that the roleplaying room is ready enough.

Wow! I knew you were going big, but wow! That is an absolutely epic print size! I'm both a little nervous and intrigued to know how it looks at that size. It would come out to what, 75-80 dots per inch? That's got to look pixellated up close; how far back do you have to stand to have the lines look clean?

When your RP room is all put together, please post a photo. I'd love to see how you do this display.

On a related note, the printer is taking in more dough for printing these things than I am for making them!

The A1 came out perfect with no pixellation, and the zoomed in bit of Timiro that I did of just the Arian area turned out really good as well, so I'm not worried about how it will come out.

Kevin really needs to get you to do the maps so he can sell them, then you both would get money.

[kiralon]

Merry Christmas

(>'-')> <('_'<) ^('_')\- \m/(-_-)\m/ <( '-')> \_( .")> <( ._.)-`

[Glistam]

This is looking really good! Did you mean to keep the paw print in the compass?

[Hotrod]

This is looking really good! Did you mean to keep the paw print in the compass?

Heck, no! This is an ET map showcasing the Dominion of Man! Human supremacy all the way!

There's supposed to be a boar there; it's in the Inkscape file I use for doing the labels, but I forgot to populate it into the main map file. Thanks for pointing it out; I'll add it to the list.

[Whiskeyjack]

I think you're subconsciously putting the proper symbol there. The domination of the Wolfen Empire is inevitable.

[Hotrod]

I think you're subconsciously putting the proper symbol there. The domination of the Wolfen Empire is inevitable.

Nay! Nay! The foul Wolfen shall die like the feral curs they are upon good Northolme steel wielded by brave warriors from Llorn to Haven to Ironhold! The mighty magicians of Wisdom shall smite them down! The proud navies of New Crest and Ironhold shall send their toothpick canoes to the bottom! Glory to the Dominion!

(My loyalty lies with whoever owns the region I'm mapping).

[Glistam]

I finally got a chance to look at the maps on my PC, instead of my phone, and I'm just completely blown away by the quality! Once again you have made maps that are simply amazing!

[kiralon]

You should see em printed out large then. hey are even better.

[Razorwing]

Am I mistaken... or are the Groff Estates still on the wrong coast of the peninsula... they should be over by New Crest (as it is the capitol of the Estates).

[Hotrod]

Am I mistaken... or are the Groff Estates still on the wrong coast of the peninsula... they should be over by New Crest (as it is the capitol of the Estates).

It's on the to-do list. I'm revising the bare geography now. It's mostly done; I just have to add in Veil Lake, a smaller reservoir, and touch up the forests a bit. Then I'll tackle all the mistakes and omissions I made in the Political Geography map.

[Hotrod]

The revised Natural Geography (version 2.0) is complete! Here it is!

Notes on this version:
+Fixed the White Rock Mountains and Copper Hills in eastern Timiro. The lake in that area now lies between these ridges rather than inside a mountain range.
+Fixed the Old Kingdom River at the north side of the big bend.
+Made the Great River flow east and fixed its tributaries west of the Shattered Mountains.
+Added Veil Lake, where the Grand Canal meets the Great River.
+Added a small reservoir at the mid-point of the Grand Canal where Neven is.
+Made the Timiro river valleys a bit smaller/shallower.
+Adjusted the volcano craters so they aren't all the same size, and smudged some falling ridges away from them.
+Refined the woods so that they more closely match my Timiro map's woods and the canon Timiro maps.

There are a few remaining issues that I don't intend to fix, mostly with Timiro:
-Timiro's minor rivers don't match my Timiro map as well as I'd like, but short of totally re-doing my Timiro Map, I'm not inclined to stress over this, since Timiro isn't the focus of this map and that region already has a full-treatment map.
-The marshes on my Timiro map aren't on this ET map for similar reasons.
-Veil Lake (where the Grand Canal meets the Great River) is a bit bigger than the 8 square miles in the description. This is for two reasons. First is to allow three rivers plus the canal to feed it. Second is so that it is visible; if I scaled it to be 8 square miles, that would be about 32 pixels total, which would be only barely larger than the width of the river itself. Similarly, the reservoir at Neven is probably a bit larger than the author intends, but it's hard to make a visible lake look good below a certain size.

Next, I'll take a look at the natural geography labels. I probably won't make many changes there.

[Hotrod]

Here's version 2.1, the revised Natural Geography map, now with the right symbol inside the compass rose and a few other tweaks.

The political map will see more significant and obvious changes. I'll get on that as time allows over the next few days.

[Razorwing]

Hehe... sorry if i haven't been paying as much attention to your to do lists... must be difficult to remember all these little details on such beautiful maps... especially when you are doing them on your own time (between work and other life commitments).

I have to agree with the sentiment that PB should hire you to do the maps for their worlds and games... such beautiful maps should be in their books... or at least offered to fans of those books as posters and such... not unlike what D&D does with many of their game worlds (who owns the rights to that game these days... I've lost track).

[Hotrod]

Hehe... sorry if i haven't been paying as much attention to your to do lists... must be difficult to remember all these little details on such beautiful maps... especially when you are doing them on your own time (between work and other life commitments).

I have to agree with the sentiment that PB should hire you to do the maps for their worlds and games... such beautiful maps should be in their books... or at least offered to fans of those books as posters and such... not unlike what D&D does with many of their game worlds (who owns the rights to that game these days... I've lost track).

No worries; I had to go through the thread from start to finish and take notes in a notepad file to keep it all straight.

As for business directly with Palladium, it's not out of the question. If you'd like to see more of this from or through Palladium, my suggestion would be to request some prints in a Christmas package and include a comment asking for other/larger prints, or for a digital product like Pinnacle did with the Savage Rifts North America map.

[Hotrod]

Update: The revised political map is done! Here it is. I made some tweaks and additions to the map, including:

+Added Llorn's lines of Stone Towers along the Old Kingdom River and along its northern border.
+Added the independent village of Sarathin in the northern Disputed Lands right next to the border (Wolfen Empire, p125).
+Added the Wolfen Walled City of Prime (Wolfen Empire, p127) just south of Froggulch.
+Added in Llorn's stone tower forts along the Old Kingdom River and its northern border. (ET p 91)
+Moved Ironshod to the southern tip of the Tegyn Peninsula.
+Put the Groff Estates on the other side of the Tegyn Peninsula. (p42 ET map)
+Added Luna beach and Myrth on the west coast of the Tegyn Peninsula. Luna Beach is marked as a Peningshir settlement; thought it's described as a town, its 16,000 population qualifies it for the bigger heraldry. Myrth, as a smaller town of smugglers and pirates, gets a red unaligned town marker.
+Adjusted the Old city ruins location and made it stand out a bit more. Move Raf-Chalon west a bit and put Old City Ruins between it and Wisdom.
+Added five ley lines and two nexuses to Zy. Since the canon description is geometrically impossible (from High Seas, p100: five lines intersecting in one point, and two of the same lines intersecting in another point on the same island), I added a minor offshore nexus where two ley lines end at an intersection. Thus, they're kind of the same ley line, and since the south shore is known to have some weird lights per High Seas, p100.
+Increased the contrast and shadows of the Old City Ruins to make it stand out a bit more.
+Put the rampant boar of the Dominion in the compass rose.
+Added the rampant boar as a flat label to the Eastern Territory itself. Also added a griffon icon to Timiro.
+Fixed the Grand Canal label; it was going too far east. Also adjusted the Great River label to clarify that it flows through the Shattered Mountains.
+Added a label to Fort Hilde and Wyndglade Keep.
+Adjusted the scale. The original scale applied to higher latitudes of the Great Northern Wilderness and was under-estimating distance for most of the area shown. The scale I'm using now is a compromise between the scales associated with the far north and the far south of this map. I also lined it up so that each segment of the alternating border in the next version will be shown to be 200 miles.
+Made many other minor adjustments to make labels fit better.

Remaining issues with this map that I have no intention of resolving:
-I only included Timiro's big cities and border forts in this map due to space concerns.
-I have not included the trade roads of the Eastern Territory (or Timiro). If folks really want them, I may try adding them in later.

All that's left now is the frame revision, which I hope to complete tomorrow.

[Hotrod]

Update: I've done the final revisions on the framed map. Here it is. I'll also update the OP with the revised links and post all of the revised versions to my gallery (linked in my sig below).

All I did for this version was change a little bit of the text in the legend at the top, to remove the passive voice sentence and specify what a green settlement icon indicates. That, and a slight tweak to the color of the frame is all that I really felt this needed.

And with that, I consider this project complete. As always, I'll watch this thread and address any additional issues people point out.

[Glistam]

These maps looks great - thank you!

[Kilgs]

Excellent work. Bravo.

Western Empire maybe...?

[Hotrod]

Excellent work. Bravo.

Western Empire maybe...?

It's on my "someday" list. That would be one of the more interesting political maps to do, with national, provincial, and regional borders/labels. At this point, the remaining regions to map are the Floenries, Yin Sloth Jungles, Nimro, Baalgor Wastelands, the Cyclops archipelago, the Old Kingdom, and the Western Empire. I've drafted bare geography maps of the Land of South Winds and the Inland Sea, but I haven't released them.

[Reagren Wright]

Final draft looks great Will. Love the location of Prime. My vote is on Baalgor Watelands next as soon as your done with any other projects on your plate.

[Glistam]

If I were to reach out for another commission, it'd be for the Western Empire. I'm not going to be in a position to do that for a while, though. But damn, somebody commission this man to draw maps when he's able to accept commissions again, because the end result is always amaizing. I have been just incredibly pleased at the entire process from start to finished result.

[jtjr26]

I don't know what your plans are for future projects but a map of the Magic Zone would be cool. Anyway Love your maps.

[Hotrod]

Since I released this map, some folks have pointed out issues to me that I may resolve in a future revision when I get around to it I'll keep a list going here for myself and so folks who use the map know about its issues:
-The mountain pass at Castle Instax is too broad, and the castle itself should be closer to the mountains (thanks Madmanmax)
-Korin Gilead's label is placed on the wrong ruin (thanks Braden)
-The woods in the north are too uniform; there should be more clearings here and there, and more small woods infiltrating into the mountains
-Some of the shields don't stand out as much as I'd like; I should find a way to make them pop a bit more.
-Timiro's rivers, marshes, and lowland terrain don't match up well with the Timiro map I made.