The Complete Map of Dorfainen

So a little bit of photoshopping later I've got this as a result to corner up most of my Imagi-Nations. Making this took a surprisingly short amount of time, but it is a very rough version. I just added a lot of layers and did funny stuff with them, nothing special.

In other news, I'd like to build some pre-dreadnoughts of balsa wood, for which I gladly accept every advice, either pointing me to sources or what to look out for when building them etc. It's just the same as with the sailing ships, I'm too much broke to buy real models while a strip of balsa wood costs less than two bucks (what with the USD conversion rate skyrocketing even more)...
I'll cover the plans in another post and will probably make a WIP sequence the way I did with the gunboat.

More mapping

I've written a chain of short stories themed 'A World in Chaos' earlier - far from completion as most of my literary works. It is set in a violent fantasy world, or more like a dusk of fantasy: the noble races are fading away, once great empires torn apart by selfishness, greed and incompetent leaders. The stories revel around a party of adventurers and a frigate named Judgement's Scream and her crew who are hunting for an ancient weapon in hope of handing it to the Gold Prince, a charismatic noble to change the course of history. There are about 40 or so gods and demigods who all want to act as their needs dictate; the one and almighty, leader of the gods seems to be in a coma of sorts and the search extends far further than the adventurers would wish for...

A complex story needs its places to be set. The first version of the map was hand-drawn and had been destroyed by an evil glass of water. The second version, made minimalistically in MS Paint here:

Pretty crude work isn't it. But this is the third, final version:

The most time-consuming part of redrawing was to place the small map's geography to the big scale one (1400x800). The western continent and the northern lands had been extended. Some tinkering with photoshop - adding textures, shading, then editing the captions in MSPaint and PS again, et voilá... Not a perfect one but it gives a feeling about the whole thing. Took about one and a half hours to make, the improvement, I think, is very visible.

Quest chains and parties can be made in this setting and played with my newest fantasy and campaign rules. I think I'll get some Caesar Fantasy figures soon (the only bad thing is that they are not really available around here nor on ebay and the shipping costs from the UK or the US are creations of the evil).

Finished map

The map is finished, fullsize here (click on 'Download' on the right of the image, and shame on dA for not letting me link properly). Also, fifteen figs are done in one day, quite a busy time and, don't forget, more searching for a job!

Welcome to Tankred (no blogger link?), thanks for dropping by!

Map making + progress report

Working on this map, a detailed one of the Colonies of Jackewline on The Cape and Teverattia for a naval / swashbuckling / treasure hunting sort of game. The only tools I've got is PS and Paint; doubled the size of the original image and have been working on smaller details but that's all for now. Are there any good softwares which would be useful, I wonder?

The particular piece on the world map. I've tried a hex grid map tool but it always crashed so back to the traditional ways. They were good till this time.

WIPs on the weekend:

Finished:

• The 19 foot knights, dipped, based and ready to some fight but this naval thing sort of intervened (watched a documentary and an episode of Hornblower so back in business again, produced two frigates and a dozen of smaller ships from lego in one afternoon)
• 2 metal figs, one 28mm (based on measurement) and one bigger (30mm or just a bit tall?), they were bought on random fares (for an insane price that time, now I don't regret it) and wanted to try how would I go on with them, the results are pretty neat, pictures will follow.
• 9 toy ships from cardboard&scratch (steamers in an easy fashion, still worth a post).

Mid-process:

• Finished the fig for the King Tiger (I had to cut the poor guy's legs so he would fit in to the turret), still no work on the camo but I'll think it will have a winter whitewash, only thing is my white acrylic isn't really fit for the task, better buy an enamel one.

Started:

• 2 mounted knights remaining from the command sprue of the Zvezda box
• 15 of the Italeri French (1798-1805) to provide some Marines for the colonial action, hope to finish them in one or two days.

Continuing with job applications as the week kicks off, not giving up that easily!

Aaaand... it's already done

Guess what? Quick work! I had nothing to do (except throwing some lines up to my everlasting novel) so I quickly captioned my map. Here, see:

A few modifications on the terrain as well - the previously posted one was outdated as the aforementioned novel describes the places more adequately.

Rhaqon Jackewlainien

-alas the Jackewline Kingdom, taking place in my very own fictional universe. Most of my solo gamin battles (1/72 scale and simulated in good ol' Cossacks: Back to War) is played in this environment. This version of the map is made by Paint and PS: the one with text I only made in Hungarian so I guess I won't upload it till I  got one in proper English.

More details about the country, the neighboring countries and the wars are going to come.