I haven’t posted a WIP on here for some time. I don’t tend to show most of my commissions here, and my personal maps haven’t had much that I can share before they’re done (at the moment it’s just getting the topography done and then adding the markers/text. Not much more other than that). This is something much more ambitious than any previous map I;ve created before, though.

Some of you might be familiar with my Inner Sea map. That map’s over 4 years old now and personally I think it’s really showing it’s age. I was only then starting to learn how to use Photoshop and was still experimenting with style (and horrible fonts). I’ve since moved on to a more modern style (both in terms of worldbuilding as well as the maps themselves), as can be seen from my Atlas Elyden maps. I’m enjoying the work that goes into those maps, though the topography and stitching that needs to be done to incorporate the maps into a larger whole is quite time-consuming. Just see the screenshot below for the size of the map...

yep, that's how big the uncompressed PSB is...

My efforts so far have seen me map various parts of the Inner Sea region I had explored in that original map 4 years ago. So I’m going to take what I’ve done on these maps (the first was created in January 2016) and apply that to a new map of the Inner Sea, depicting a slightly smaller area than that first version (I’ll be omitting the area of the Dark Sea in the bottom right to really concentrate on the Inner Sea itself).

I’m currently working on the topography, which is the most time-consuming part of the project. I’m probably half done by now, and am busy working on a region of dense mountains in the north west which is taking a long time to get done. Other than that I still need to tinker with the ‘finished’ areas to get them looking a bit more natural. Once that’s done I’ll be able to concentrate on rivers before getting things like borders and labels done.

I’ll be working at A1 size at 400 dpi on this one, with an eye to getting it printed as a poster for myself and patrons who are interested in it (at a cost that’s yet to be decided, to cover printing and postage). I’ll later resize it to A3 and adjust it as needed for the smaller size (removing less important labels as necessary, for instance) for my Atlas Elyden project.

I intend on keeping the same colours as the atlas maps, though I might weather the map a bit, to make it look used and add some texture to the otherwise flat atlas style.

This is what I have ready so far, in terms of Topography. Many regions are still rough (particularly the south and south western areas of the map), with just the first layer of topography finished (like in the south east):

Inner Sea map - WIP

To anyone wondering, the topography is done 100% by hand and none of it is generated. Each level of topography is a separate layer in Photoshop, filled with the respective colour and given a hide all mask that’s painted white and given a 1px dark brown stroke.

More details on how the map is generated can be found on a tutorial I posted, here.

#Innersea, #Elyden, #Poster, #Atlaselyden,