topographical maps

11 December 2017

Phrydias Topographical Map (Patreon)

Calidar, Great Caldera, Patreon, Phrydias, topographical maps 0

I completed the first year of my Patreon campaign in October, with Phrydias:

Many thanks to October’s patrons:

Jesper Andersen, Diederik van Arkel, Azure Admiral, Hans Peter Bak, Trentin Bergeron, David Chart, Francesco Defferrari, Christopher Desmond, Joshua DiCicco, Paul Dupuis, Andrew P Gibson, Bruce Heard, Brian Isikoff, Eric Jackson, Belinda Kelly, Grégory Le Louette, Wendy Lord, Harri Mäki, Nate Mangion, Matt, Gordon McCormick, Anna B Meyer, Sverre Midthjell, Hervé Musseau, Wolfgang Neckel, Cameron Paine, Thomas Pizard, Dave Poppel, Stephen Rider, Friedrich Röhrer-Ertl, Jeff Scifert, Robert Slaughter, Erin D Smale, Joshua Starnes, Kurt Stoffer, Maciej Szydłowski, Devan Sykes, Charles Tait, Sandra Tait, Greg Traeger, Douglas Zielsdorf.

Here’s an excerpt from the post for this map over at Patreon:

The smallest of the Great Caldera’s nations, Phrydias actually only takes up about half a page when shown at the same scale as the other nations I’ve been tackling. It’s even smaller than Meryath. So I’ve taken advantage of the extra space to turn it into a vertically oriented map, with a nice big space for the legend at the bottom.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt thanks to everyone who has supported my work over the past year. I can’t tell you how much your backing has done to help, and I’m really proud of what we have accomplished: at least one new map each and every month, and sometimes more. Most of the Great Caldera is now mapped at a nice medium scale, while 10 mile hex maps have expanded out from Meryath into neighbouring Narwan, and are continuing with Caldwen. On top of that, you gave me the motivation I needed to complete the Soltan Ephemeris illustration I had conceived three years ago.

Where do we go from here? Well, there are still two Great Caldera nations to detail at medium scale (Ellyrion and Belledor), as well as Caldwen’s hex maps to finish. After that, there are hex maps to be developed for the rest of the nations, but also some major new projects to start — which I’m hoping to begin work on over the winter.

For now, tomorrow we’ll begin exploring Caldwen at 10 miles per hex

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10 December 2017

Nordheim Topographical Map (Patreon)

Calidar, Great Caldera, Nordheim, Patreon, topographical maps 0

September’s map was the Kingdom of Nordheim:

Nordheim Topographical Map — Topographic Map of the Kingdom of Nordheim, Great Caldera, Calidar. This map was created with the support of Patreon patrons.

With many thanks to my patrons for the month:

Jesper Andersen, Azure Admiral, Hans Peter Bak, Trentin Bergeron, David Chart, Francesco Defferrari, Christopher Desmond, Joshua DiCicco, Paul Dupuis, Bruce Heard, Brian Isikoff, Eric Jackson, Belinda Kelly, Grégory Le Louette, Wendy Lord, Harri Mäki, Nate Mangion, Matt, Gordon McCormick, Anna B Meyer, Sverre Midthjell, Hervé Musseau, Wolfgang Neckel, Cameron Paine, Thomas Pizard, Dave Poppel, Stephen Rider, Friedrich Röhrer-Ertl, Jeff Scifert, Robert Slaughter, Erin D Smale, Joshua Starnes, Kurt Stoffer, Maciej Szydłowski, Devan Sykes, Charles Tait, Sandra Tait, Greg Traeger, Douglas Zielsdorf.

You can see the original post for this map over at Patreon.

Next up: we visit the Great Caldera’s smallest nation, the Semocracy of Phrydias.

9 December 2017

Araldûr Topographical Map (Patreon)

Araldûr, Calidar, Great Caldera, Patreon, topographical maps 0

I’ve been very busy working on the next Calidar book, Dreams of Aerie, and as a result I’ve fallen behind on posting my latest Patreon maps here. To get back up to date, I’m going to post a new map each day for the next few days.

First up is August’s topographical map of Araldûr, Calidar’s dwarven kingdom:

Araldûr Topographical Map — *Topographic Map of the Kingdom of Araldûr, Great Caldera, Calidar. This map was created with the support of Patreon patrons.*

This map was produced thanks to the generous support of August’s patrons:

Jesper Andersen, Azure Admiral, Trentin Bergeron, David Chart, Francesco Defferrari, Christopher Desmond, Joshua DiCicco, Paul Dupuis, Bruce Heard, Brian Isikoff, Eric Jackson, Grégory Le Louette, Wendy Lord, Harri Mäki, Nate Mangion, Gordon McCormick, Anna B Meyer, Sverre Midthjell, Hervé Musseau, Wolfgang Neckel, Cameron Paine, Thomas Pizard, Dave Poppel, Stephen Rider, Friedrich Röhrer-Ertl, Jeff Scifert, Robert Slaughter, Erin D Smale, Joshua Starnes, Kurt Stoffer, Maciej Szydłowski, Charles Tait, Sandra Tait, Greg Traeger, Douglas Zielsdorf.

Here’s an excerpt from the post for this map over at Patreon:

The mountains and valleys received a great deal of attention during the sculpting and erosion processes back in 2014, and I’ve been wanting to show them off properly for years. The twisting canyon-like valley running south from the central valley area out to the Inner Sea of the Prophets in particular took a lot of tweaking to make it work properly.

I’ve been slowly revising how I depict water depth, in an effort to make more of an obvious gradation. You can see the results here, with shallow/coastal, sea, and deep sea areas. I’ve also tweaked the ripples round the coasts, but I’m still on the fence about this version. The problem is that shallow coastal water makes my previous light ripple effect almost invisible. Perhaps I just need to reduce the opacity of these new ripples to make them merge in a bit more.

Next up: touring the fjords of Nordheim.

Update (28th January 2018)

I just finished making some major revisions to this map’s labels, tweaking all the positions while making the font size match all the other maps in the series. I also added names of neighbouring countries as well as their regions; added a stronger glow around the mountain names to make them more legible; and got rid of the map border, which was an experiment that hasn’t turned out quite how I wanted it to.

This map incorporates a vertical exaggeration effect into the terrain, which looks great but also displaces the terrain slightly. A plain top-down version of this map is available to all patrons over at my Patreon.

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