World Map of Undirras (commission)

[Caenwyr]

The world of Undirras is featured heavily in David Vissers's eponymous Sci-Fi series "Origins of Undirras". Up til now, the world only existed in written form (albeit formidably described by the author), but he now decided that the place needed a map, and that's where yours truly comes in. In this thread, I'll try and take this world from his imagination and bring it to life as best I can. First and foremost: a draft of what goes where!

[Josiah VE]

I like it already! I love sketches like this. Love the coastline already, looks really dynamic.

[Caenwyr]

Thanks Josiah!

In the meantime I had some interesting discussions with the client, and turns out that on their sketch, the equator ran diagonally from bottom left to top right! While seriously cool and unusual, we decided to straighten it out for ease of understanding: to most readers, north is still just "up", and realigning that to "north is top left" would take a while and for most people (me among them) quite counterintuitive at first! So: we decided to give that map a spin.



Also, first bits are inked!

[Caenwyr]

Oh and since this map will be in black and white, here's a first stab at the "colouring":



We decided to move the SE landmasses a bit more to the right, to balance out that empty corner and get rid of that possibly over-obvious "this map was rotated" feel.

[Caenwyr]

Okay, update!

A ton more inking done, and the first two insets! Not sure yet whether I'll be putting them in an empty spot as shown here, or positioned on top of their actual location (thus covering part of the underlying terrain).

[Caenwyr]

Okay, looks like I haven't updated here for a while. This newest version boasts a ton of forests all around the equator. And I completely redid the canyon!! And shaded the first island! Woohoo!

I also added an inset map showcasing the islands that used to be in the west, since discussions with client unveiled that the scale of this place is huge (Undirras' radius is twice Earth's), causing the islands at their orinigal size to be as large as North America and then some, while they appear in earlier novels as much, much smaller than that. So we had to remedy this discrepancy (plus some other disconcerting consequences of Undirras' unexpected hugeness like gravity), and this is the hopefully elegant solution!



The frame is still purely preliminary of course, but I added a quick bunch of jibberjabber to give client an idea of what's possible—in the final version, the content of the title box will probably quite different. And also, there's probably gonna be corner ornaments! But more on these later.

[Caenwyr]

A teeny tiny bit more inking done. And by tiny I mean everything! Except for the islands in the south. Eh, they're for the next update

[Caenwyr]

Okay, next update. All of the shading is done now.



I also brightened the seas a little bit for easier distinction of the ladmasses. Since B&W maps are notoriously bad at generating replies (this is the 7th post by yours truly in an 8-post thread ), I'll go and try to make a quick mockup with some colour for my next update.

[Caenwyr]

Hi all! So! It's been a while since my last update, but that doesn't mean I've been idle. In fact I've been working on not just this commission, but also on a private project (which I'll start a thread for in a minute) and I've also started writing again after a very, VERY long hiatus. All this to explain the fact that I've waited a month to post another update here, but I'm sure you guys understand: life is hectic for all of us and sometimes it just happens and sweeps us away from the Land of Mapping Bliss. I'm not complaining at all .

Okay more on the map itself! Here is the most recent update:


The map is B&W because it will appear in a book, but I also promised I'd add a quick colour mock-up for clickbait purposes so here goes!



Still need to add the second shield and all of the labelling, but we're getting there.

[QED42]

The colour version pops so much more, will definitely work for click bait.