Making Maps

Over the past week or so I have been pouring hours and hours into a new project. And for once it doesn’t involve wool, alpaca fibre or any other type of spinnable or knittable material. This time I have been drawing a map.

A very large map.

I’ve always loved maps. When I was young I was fascinated by them. Paper? And it tells you where to go? Witchcraft! I used to spend hours and hours in the car examining the Melways in great detail and calling out directions to my mother. I remember one day being horrified when ‘followed along’ and discovered that we where about to drive into the sea. I told my mum but she didn’t seem at all concerned. When we didn’t end up taking an unplanned dip I was forced to recognise that my ability to use a map was pretty much non-existent. Sadly my map-reading skills haven’t improved much since then. It’s fortunate I started driving after the invention of GPS’s and Googlemaps. If I had to rely on maps I’d never get anywhere.

While I might not have a great ability to read maps (or any sense of direction at all really) I still enjoy looking at them. Not the real ones, but the Fantasy maps. The lovely little things at the front of almost all of my favourite books. They give a feeling of distance, of consistency within the world. Plus some of them are pretty damned cool.

I’ve made a few attempts at making maps over the years, sometimes for fun but mostly to go along with a story I was planing. I’ve never attempted anything near this big.

While working on this monster I have discovered several things:

• I should finish the coastline first. Even if I am sick to death of it. If I don’t I will end up with a mysteriously right-angled continent.
• Mountains should be scribbly. Hills should be smooth. Sand dunes should not be attempted if I am not using colour.
• Colour Palettes are good. Especially where you are using the same five colours over and over. The eyedropper tool is cool and all, but also uses time.
•  I do not need to draw every tree by hand. Something I should have worked out far earlier than I did. No one is ever going to notice that the same tree was used half a continent away.
• Scales are much simpler if you remember to use the ruler tool. Even better, make sure the ruler tool is set to cm’s and not inches.
• Odd geographical features are most easily explained by ‘A wizard did it’ for oddly placed forests, try ‘Crazy Druid’

I also learnt the exact limitations of my computers willingness to put up with my sudden obsession with epic sized fantasy maps. At a certain point my computer threw a tantrum and decided to bribe me into reducing the number of layers by refusing to let me click on anything that wasn’t the merge layer button. An oddly specific form of dummy spit but there you go.

If anyone wants to have a look at the larger version, it’s here. Although even that is less than 50% of the original, and a fair bit of the detail is lost. But still, you should get the gist.