I co-created a fantasy world which was planned to become a game server. That plan never came to fruition, but during the time it was, I created an interactive map of the world using one of my co-creator’s paintings of what she perceived the world as.
I started by gaining a friends written permission to use their painting as a background for my map. I used this as a base for how I wanted everything to look and where everything was going to be.
After that, I made a basic colour-blended version of the map.
The colour-blended map was a simple way of figuring out how the land and vegetation was going to be placed, and how the lake was going to be layered.
Once I had figured that out, I drew up the linework in photoshop, using a paper texture with an attribution license as a background.
I also created several icons to be displayed on the interactive map. I went with a mostly black colour scheme for most of the icons, but some icons, the once representing magical items or locations, I decided to give colour. These being the element keys, the skeleton of the Origicalis, and the Heart of Tyrelion.
Each of these icons were made small enough that they wouldn’t blur when sized up or down for the interactive map, and, when clicked, they would create a popup image of a scroll with information about each item or location.
Unfortunately, the interactive map no longer works, however, the image on the left is a rough mock-up of what it looked like when it was still useable.
The aforementioned scrolls were written as if different characters were talking about them, and the title of each was written in Hybis, the written language of the world.
Overall, I think I did well with this piece. I like how it looks, but I would make some changes to it now. I’d make the lake’s progression from shallow to deep a lot more gradual that it is now, and I’d make a lot more variations into lantern forest’s lanterns, as they’re all bunched together the same way due to the brush I used being shaped like that. But overall, I’m proud of how I made this and proud of the outcome.
