When you take a photograph, the colours are encoded into very small pixels. Using Illustrator is a bit of a steeper learning curve than some of the pre-packaged map builders out there, but ultimately Illustrator gives a lot of control because it’s a vector-based design program rather than a raster-based design program.
They do absolutely help of course, but map design, I’ve found, is a very different style of graphical art, and one that has its own unique problems and challenges. I drew (literally) on my skills with graphics and design to do this, so while the tone of this post may be sort of here’s-what-I-did-next I’m not going to assume you have a full understanding of design methodologies. One thing I was sure about was that the graphics had to be of the highest quality, as close to an actual hired map-maker might produce. I know the program very well, so it was an easy decision for me to make, although I had never used it for something as detailed as map, with all of its coast lines and borders. There are a number of ways you can build a map, but I’m going to talk about the way that I used which was using Adobe Illustrator. I used grey for the sea to pick out the white land more. A ‘zoomed in’ view of Dali with map pins, hills and borders.
(See more below on styling a vector map) The map used in my upcoming RINGLANDER novella THE BATTLE THAT WAS LOST ( available for preorder from Broken Binding – link to be updated soon). Here’s a closer view from the same source file, which has been edited in a slightly different style. It also contains a few countries within those continents: Rengas is a ring-shaped fantasy world comprised of 5 main continents: The main antagonists the Bohr want to conquer the lands they have yet to reach, and so maps in this world are revered and rare. It helped me find a way to knit the story into the world very literally, as the main character’s heritage is to do with navigation. Briefly though, I wrote my debut novel over 7 years, due to a multitude of reasons, so the details of the world I had created were able to marinate for for a long time.
I’ve tried to make this guide as general as possible, although I do use examples of how specifically Rengas came to be and how I built it. If you’ve landed here without knowledge of my book, fear not.
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