A while back I thought I'd finished up a map of the world I'd been working on for a LONG time. I've always had grand dreams of what I'd do with that map - of the world I'd build from it - but those dreams were stymied by… well, by lots of things. Lack of what I considered to be really good ideas, lack of direction, lack of confidence. You get the idea.

Something clicked, though, a few months ago, and I finally started writing. Fast forward to now, through lots of work, learning about self-publication and print-on-demand, and making a ton of mistakes along the way, and I'm not quite halfway finished. I think.

I've got the creation myths wrapped up, the gods and races, the languages - all the stuff that sits quietly in the back seat and drives the rest.

Since it started with a map, and since I'm pretty happy with what I've done so far (even if it never really does go to POD or anywhere else), I thought I'd show it off a little. (Even though I'm "showing off," please, please, please do feel free to bash it around and tell me how I can make it better!)

While I loved the color palette of the original map it's far too colorful for the aged parchment look that I've ended up with, so I changed the style to Parchment World.

Below is an image of the two page spread of the PDF where I'm placing the map.

The original map is in my gallery here: https://forum.profantasy.com/galleryviewer/35/29621

Higher resolution image of the pages below are here: https://forum.profantasy.com/galleryviewer/35/37464

I've also discovered that if I use the Redraw shortcut after I've started moving the second image, it then shows the image so I can see both at once.

Or maybe that's only when I'm copying a symbol... Not at my CC3 computer right now or I'd check it for you!

Me too, Loopysue!

They're from Jon Roberts Revisited (2022).

I have always been strongly drawn to the Herwin Wielink style - I just absolutely love the look of the map as a whole and the character of the symbols. However, I almost never use it other than to take a symbol here and there for other maps, because of the lack of symbols. What it does, it does extraordinarily well (IMHO), but it doesn't do much.

Not a specific style comment, but rather a general look - I often, but by no means always, lean towards subdued colors and subtle color shifts rather than the bright, bold maps styles (Dark Realms or Parchment Maps, for example, over Sarah Wroot or Mercator).

Mike Schley is impossible to beat for sheer variety of symbols, of course.

Hope this helps.