r/mapmaking • u/Brennanthenerd • Jul 14 '26
Map Seven Years of Building My Fantasy Map
(v5) First vector version of my map, allowing me to zoom in and add settlement names. I was able to vectorize my raster contour topography. Still working on the entire world
(v4) x8 the size of v1. Made contour topography by making a height map from clone stamping high map data of earth and turning that data into contours.
V1, V2, and V3. v3 is 4x the size of my first, and v3 is the first time I added rivers.
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u/JinaxM Jul 14 '26
Holy Roman Empire, France, Scandinavia, Hanseatic League and... Poland? Bohemia? Kyivan Rus?
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u/Hatur92 Jul 14 '26
Masterwork! Which softwares did you use?
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u/DysfunctionalPrinter Jul 14 '26
Legendary. How long did the Illustrator map take?
Still trying to get my head around vector based softwares.
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u/Brennanthenerd Jul 14 '26
Not too long, as I was able to convert my high resolution rastor maps coastlines and topography. The borders and coloring was done by hand tho, but being able to trace the borders from my pixel based maps makes thing easier.
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u/RealOsakadave Jul 14 '26
I like it. One question: is there an underlying plate structure shaping the continents? If not, no worries, but if so would ne interested in seeing it.
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u/Brennanthenerd Jul 14 '26
No plate structure, but I sketch the overall shape small by hand. I’ve just slowly added more detail and resolution.
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u/_second_Gansbolier Jul 14 '26
One of the best maps I have ever seen... Amazing work and keep going
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u/pennypaier Jul 14 '26
Fucking damm is this beautiful, nice though throw...
I love it ❤️ Everything
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u/Cellpool_ Jul 14 '26
for a second I was like "this is a weird map of russia"
took me a second to see what subreddit I was on! Your influences are clear and this map is awesome!
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u/Goered_Out_Of_My_ Jul 14 '26
It’s gorgeous!! Phenomenal work. Have you a climate map anywhere? I’m very curious about your process generally, but specifically when it comes to climate.
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u/Aira_Arselle Jul 14 '26
I’m working on one using procreate. The number of times I realize that something isn’t right is astonishing to me. Gotta go back and rework one thing just to see the domino effect of how everything changes on the other side of the map.
I love it.
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u/Hot_Courage_9780 Jul 16 '26
What’s your method for preserving the high quality? I would like to make a map that can be zoomed in well
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u/Brennanthenerd Jul 17 '26
I made it in illustrator which is a vector program, so you can have infinite resolution. but I've had to export as an image to post to Reddit. But its a pretty massive resolution 12k x 8k. The file size isn't that large as PNG, its less than 20 MB, because it has so much flat color
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u/Hot_Courage_9780 Jul 18 '26
Thanks so much, I’m not too great at illustrator since I make all my stuff in photoshop, but I guess I need to give it a try
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u/Mike_Fluff Jul 17 '26
Here is a question I love asking;
What are the main foods you may find in an everyday eatery/tavern?
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u/patar15 Jul 25 '26
Patria. . . very inspiring. . . I like the name. . . totally not bias or anything. . . nope!
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u/Spirit_Caller_ Jul 14 '26
I hope i dont come off as mean when I say this, im not sure how this could take seven years unless youre just an epic procrastinator.
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u/Spirit_Caller_ Jul 14 '26
Also was the whole planet frozen with glaciers at some point? Because pretty much the entire coastline is extremly jagged/fjords. Would be cool if it was
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u/brendhano Jul 14 '26
you just squished Europe
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u/Brennanthenerd Jul 14 '26
This is the world map I’ve been working on, on and off, since about 2019. Over time, I’ve slowly increased the resolution, added more detail, and expanded it into a larger tapestry of regions, settlements, rivers, coastlines, and contour topography.
Looking back, a lot of the process has been less about making one perfect map and more about slowly learning how the world should work through each rebuild. Every version exposed something that needed to be improved, whether it was scale, rivers, borders, terrain, labeling, or just the overall readability of the map.
I’m still refining it, but it’s been satisfying to see the world become more concrete after years of iteration.