Maps for Darkstar novels
Here are three maps I drew for author Benedict Patrick (Amazon page link) for his Darkstar novel series. I'm horribly late posting them, as I finished the maps last December, but I really liked the result of the long project so I want to share the maps here too, rather late than never.
All the maps are originally hand drawn to a paper, in a size of 28 x 34 cm.
The series has two books this far, The Flight of the Darkstar Dragon, was published 2019 (without maps), and the second one, The Return of The Whalefleet, came out in early this year, together with a second edition of the first book. I drew altogether three maps: two for showing the Darkstar Dimension in each of the books, and a cross section of a flying ship to be featured in both of the books. The project was possible because of a very succesful Kickstarter campaign run by the author. I was honoured to be a part of the campaign and luckily I got to draw all three maps.
This was a really fun and rewarding project. The maps were all drawn as black and white, and I wanted to try my best with different drawing techniques. Some came out better, some not. Perhaps an even bigger challenge was the setting itself, the Darkstar Dimension, where the books take place. It's a sort of bubble world, where people are inside, surrounded by a dark sea with glowing fish in every direction. In the centre of the world is a purple star, the Darkstar, guarded by a huge dragon. And then there's also rocks floating mid-air, as well as "rifts", which are portals to other worlds. (Have to mention that the books are absolutely a pleasure to read).
I got quite free hands with the maps, and I tried to represent them in the best way I could imagine. In the books, one of the characters say in one point, that the Dimension is impossible to map. The author also confirmed that he had no idea how to do it. But we were both happy with the result.
I drew the second Dimension map after the first one was finished, and even though there was some repetitiveness in the process, it was nice to have a change to do some things differently, as in the second map I knew better what to do. I think the second map ("Whalefleet") is one of the best maps I've ever drawn.
Then there was the Melodious Narwhal, the flying ship. Well, it was again something really different. I have never professionally drawn any ship cross sections, but it ended up quite good. The cross section is based on a real ship, a museum ship Glenlee in Glasgow, which was the inspiration for the ship for the author. There were many modifications, but it helped a lot to have something to base it.
Looking forward to hear what you think about the maps!
- Mikael
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