I spent a lot of my spare time working on maps. Here’s what I have to show for my effort.

First off, Thraeton now has mountain ranges. I experimented a little and came up with the following abstract style, which I like a lot.

Thraeton

Detail view:

Thraeton Detail

I am currently working on climate – wind, ocean currents, climate zones.

In between, I revisited that world which started it all, and which gave the name to this website: Enderra. I began by recreating what geography has already been established over the past 17 years. As you can see, this is not the entire planet just yet – the entire “new world” in the west was never mapped out, so it’ll be added later.

Enderra

I also experimented with drawing pretty national borders. These are very rough, and I’ll have to redraw them as the map evolved, but as a stylistic experiment I think it was quite a success:

Enderra National Borders

As always, I work in Inkscape.

I haven’t spent enough time drawing lately. Today, I had the idea of attempting to create a reflection in a lake with Inkscape. This is the result:

Lake

I personally am happy with how this one came out. It took me 10-15 minutes, I would say.

I am still experimenting with drawing planets. This time, with Inkscape instead of The Gimp.

Planet drawn with Inkscape

This was a really quick design, and for that I think it works rather well.

Quick Inkscape drawing appropriate to the season:

Jack o' Lantern

Happy Halloween, everybody.

Another Inkscape work. I already posted this on my main blog some time ago, but I figured it was much more appropriate here. It’s “Alternate History Art”, without being actually part of any specific setting.

Pan American Airship Company

I used an old German Zeppelin poster as reference. The Pan Am logo and world map are from Wikipedia. The drawing is a little rough, but I am still not exactly an Inkscape pro and this was done half a year ago. You see where I am going with this.

Some Arnâron art:

City in the Desert

A city poking through the dust of the desert world. Painted with Inkscape.

Updated Nightscape to have better moons.

Nightscape - Fixed.

Detail view:

Nightscape - Fixed.

Desert.

Done!

Nightscape with Stars.

Detail view:

Nightscape with Stars. Detail view.

Think I am done with this one.

Another Inkscape work-in-progress:

Desert.

I really do suck at this: I first had the right side (the top of the dune) colored green, luckily a buddy of mine did a color check for me.

A quick Inkscape drawing:

Nightscape.

I think it needs stars.

As you know I originally wanted to use Mars as a setting for sword & planet fiction, games, and so on.

So before I started to work on Arnâron, I actually did some design on a mythical Mars. Here are two samples of Inkscape art I created; the planet itself and a rough map.

Mars

Mars Canal Map

Mars Canal Map - Detail View

I still sometimes wish I could just use Mars as the setting, but as you know I have my reasons why I decided against it. I guess Mars just strikes a chord with me (and a lot of people). Even so I think my decision was a good one – sever the links with what came before, use it as an inspiration rather than a mold. Create IP, rather than use other people’s.

A bit of a follow-up because I was told off-blog that the map is a little hard to read without any explanation… the different shades represent different heights. Here’s the basic idea, not to scale:

Arnâron - Elevation

The colors are the same as in the map.

As the oceans weren’t as deep as Earth’s, the continental rise also isn’t as deep. Still, with the greatest depth in the ocean at 1-2km, this still means at least a hundred meters for the continental rise, and that’s quite a slope. Places where this slope is greater will be natural barriers for migrations, caravans, and invading armies; locatations where the slope is not as steep, not as high, or where it has been worn down by erosion or other factors will be natural choke points where the before-mentioned can travel, and so they may be of strategic interest. Something to keep in mind when I draw the map in greater detail – and it shows the importance of thinking about such things: The more you work on something, the more ideas present themselves…

Here’s the second draft of the “desert world” map:

Arnâron - A Dying World

The features are a little small, but I think you can make them out. This is the previous map, but edited – I remove the climate / terrain types again and added locations of ancient and modern cities, and I placed the global canal network (the black lines).

I am also playing a lot with “shadows” to make the map easier to read, and I think it came out pretty well if I may say so myself.

Here’s a first glance at Arnâron, the desert planet.

Arnâron - A Dying World

Pretty much all of the once world-spanning ocean has dried up. There are small ice caps at both poles. They will vary greatly over the course of the year. In the local winter they will expand towards the equator to cover most of the zones marked Taiga and Tundra.

The surface of the world is mostly covered in rock and sand – much of it is former ocean floor. In locations with water, sparse vegetation and steppes thrive. The former western continent features the only thick vegeatation on the planet, along a wide river that runs off from the vast mountain range that covers the continent.

A vast salt flat is located in the northern hemisphere, between the two continents. This is the most hostile area on the planet – the absolute lack of liquid water and the searing temperatures mean that nothing can survive here.

The map shows Arnâron without the influences of man… which will be our next map, coming up sometime this weekend.