Sarifal map for Dragon 376

[mikeschley]

Hey Guys,
Here's one of my more recent maps done for WotC's 4E Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting. Anyone familiar with the Moonshae Isles will recognize the area mapped and hopefully will get a kick out of the level of detail I included. The Realmslore article this appears in is titled Sarifal and the author, Brian R. James, did and incredible job fleshing out it's tasty tasty flavor. You can check out his website at http://www.loremaster.org

The entire map (Other than the rough provided by the author) was produced in Photoshop CS3 with a Wacom tablet and took about 4 days to complete. Typically I'll flesh out the finished inks and text before working on any color application. The process is actually very similar to the way comics are digitally inked and colored.

Well, let me know what you think. Crits are, as always, greatly appreciated.

Mike

[Cor Azer]

Sweet map.

It sort of reminded me of the old Forgotten Realms Atlas by... ugh... I can't recall her name. I know she also did a Dragonlance and Dragonriders of Pern atlas as well. Had maps and paths followed by main characters in all sorts of novels. Karen Fonstad, maybe?

Any hope for a legend? Took a while to realize some towns were marked with squares instead of circles.

[blobsticks]

Mike, that is brilliant, just what I'd hope all maps in rpg games would look like. Excellent quality!

[mikeschley]

Originally Posted by Cor Azer

Any hope for a legend? Took a while to realize some towns were marked with squares instead of circles.

I guess that without the Realmslore text accompanying the map the symbols can be a bit confusing. Sorry about that. The conventions used here are pretty standard but I'll make sure to include a small key somewhere on all upcoming regional maps like this one. Filled squares are ruins, filled white circles are villages, filled black circles are cities, filled black circles surrounded by a white circle are large cities, black stars surrounded by a white circle are capital cities, moons are druid groves, and black X's are points of interest.

Hope this helps,
Mike

[Rhun]

Excellent map. I really like it. Keep up the good work!

[Derulbaskul]

Your maps make me sad.

Sad because I remember how great the maps were for FR in 3E and how great they could have been if you were the cartographer for the latest version of FR (which I otherwise like).

I really hope you're the cartographer on some articles on the Dalelands and the North ASAP... pretty please.

[Nifft]

Gorgeous.

Thanks, -- N

[WampusCat43]

I saw that on WotC's site today and thought "Damn! I wish everything they produced looked this good!"

You have my permission to continue with the rest of the Realms.

[Matt James]

It is indeed a beauty. Brian is lucky to have such a talented person that makes the maps. We talk about you often (in a good way).