Forgotten Realms: The Sword Coast (A Mike Schley tribute)

[Wired]

Welp, this one was a long time in the making!

Mike Schley has been one of the earlier cartographers I have stumbld upon, mainly due to myself still being an active pen & paper player back in the day. As such his maps for D&D were hugely influential in getting me into mapping. Ironically, until the middle of last year, I never tried my hand at the style of map I primarily remember his work for. And boy, I didn't know what I was getting into!

I set myself the goal of trying to recreate his north-western Faerûn map as best as I could. "Couldn't be that hard", I thought. "Looks pretty straightforward," I thought.

Boy, was I wrong.

What started as a simple style test (I've never done those kind of top-down maps before) became hard labour that consumed countless hours of drawing and trial & error. And more than ever before I've come to appreciate Mike's art and skill. The sheer amount of detail, let alone the quantity of lineart in his original piece is quite simply staggering. The contour lines on the ground, the forest (all trees are individually drawn!), the ocean detail.

Quite frankly, at some point I had to capitulate and call it a day. Halfway through the process I simply created a pattern for my forests. My oceans are a bare imitation of his'. And the colours and level of detail never manage to match his. It's through this that I've come to realize just how much work Mike must have put into the original.

As such, this is now less of a D&D fan piece and more of a Mike Schley fan piece. Thanks Mike for the great work you do. You're still an inspiration to this humble cartographer!