Birth of an Imaginary Nation

It's that time again, where I pull a few straggling thoughts on geography, decor, and random squiggles to fill empty space from my brain and set out to create a fantasy map.

I like maps, they're an odd comfort in a world where your phone could march you to your death off a cliff and none would be the wiser. Which is, perhaps, why it feels so strange when I doodle out my own.

Being cursed to only be able to take things seriously about 27% of the time (whatever you do, don't steal a gypsie's trombone, they're very protective of their horn section) I can only get in a few story related landmarks before I'm adding inside, outside and inside-out jokes.

But to the meat of the matter at hand, this was the drawing I began with. Black, white, lots of scribbles.

The next step was color and lots of it. This took only around 35 or so layers, I'm doing a lot better than last time when I suspect photoshop had dreams of strangling me with its lasso tool.

Once I'd decided upon fonts and finding the absolute worst places to stick them it was time for the words, which make a map moderately more helpful than an interpretation of an aerial picture.

And for the coup de map, I added a border because borders make everything fancy.

There's still lots of tinkering I'm sure I'll do, and making it sparkle in black and white for when I finally get to proof printing time in the book stage, but here is my wacky land of the elves. Make of it what you will. I suggest a hat.