Four pages into mapping, the results look like this:
Even at this stage I needed to make some adjustments to the image – tiny misalignments, a paper slightly askew here, a scanning margin there, all meant that to make the images mesh I needed to expand and contract parts of the map, add a stairway here and a cluster of fungi there. This can be fiddly, but in some ways there’s a silver lining – these sorts of realignments tend to further disguise the gaps between pages and give the final result a slightly more organic look while still preserving the overall design.
With the images digitally sewn together, I then started adding names. I sometimes have a list of street ideas jotted down, but generally I make them up as I go. I named the giant (Napping Nog) and labelled a few especially important landmarks. There was some space left around some larger structures, so I decided retroactively to make these notable locations, labelling them the Wheezing Tower and the Collegium Gargantua – I’ll figure out details for these locations later, but the Colelgium will likely be a school focused on sleep-magic and psychedelic enchantments, while the tower might belong to a wizardly cabal. Making “discoveries” like this preserves a certain sense of spontaneity during the process.
Up next I’ll be starting a new district – possibly Wormwood, Rotting Hill, or the Brambles.
Anonymous
Thank you for the amazing map.
As a matter of personal interest, when I see the word “wormwood” I always wonder if there going to be a connection with radiation of some kind, as wormwood is the name of the plant which is very close to сhernobyl.
Bearded-Devil
Oh interesting! There’s always a good chance of some sort of bizarre radiation in my settings. I’m nearly finished up with Wormwood now – I thought of the name because of the link to asbinthe, so it’s an urban forest and also the pleasure-district, like if you took Amsterdam’s red light district and spliced it with Mirkwood. Winding paths, theatres, pyschedelic fog, bordellos, moss-ridden bridges over the canals, lights strung up in the trees.