Ever since I was a pretty young lad, I have always loved maps. There’s just something about them, and in particular I really love old world maps. Old world maps are pieces of art in themselves with gorgeous ornate designs that are typically entwined with what ever area it’s showing. I’ve been reading maps, and making maps for a number of years now and even today for my job, I’m asked every now and then to create maps of places or insides of buildings for navigational or reference purposes. Although they can be fairly simple, I still get engrossed (probably a tad too much) in getting them just right, whether or not the client asked for that level of detail. Normally, this causes me to spend a great deal more time on them then anyone really would like.
Anyway, I was asked to create a world map by an extremely good friend for another very good friend (friendrequestception?) which I was delighted to take on the task. This project really pushed my limits and broke several of them: spanning from beginning the drawing via pen and paper all the way through Illustrator and then into Photoshop for the final touches!
I’m leaning towards giving my old Vana’Diel map this treatment as well, and when I ‘recharge’ my cartography energy, I’ll probably tackle another world as well. Probably something I’ll create out of the air not really relating to anything (well, least not that I can think of yet). If I can figure out how the heck to do Hurricane-like stuff, I might just do Azeroth also.
Random though: I’m gonna smack around CS2 if it keeps complaining about lacking RAM – silly program, you have TONS to use!
