Moving Beyond the Skies

+Bruce Heard is hard at work on the latest +World of Calidar book: CC1 Beyond the Skies.  He has been posting previews of it on his blog for a while now, including most recently excerpts from the main part of the book: the god entries.  As you may have guessed from the previews, the main text is well underway, and Bruce is also creating symbols for each god, as well as some pretty amazing plans for major temples.

At the same time, I have begun work on two other aspects of the project: layout and mapping.

The layout is likely going to be very much in line with CAL1 In Stranger Skies, although we're also trying out some new features.  One of the big questions is whether to keep CAL1's three columns or switch to a two column layout.

Cartography-wise, CC1 is a very different beast from CAL1.  The maps this time will be much more thematic.  In addition to Bruce's temple plans, I am working to create some fixed styles for presenting demographic information — which in CC1's case mostly means geographical distribution of faiths.  Bruce has already posted maps for each Calderan nation on his blog.  Here's a sneak peek at a work-in-progress version of Bruce's Elven Faiths map:

This was a test-of-concept for the area colour-coding, using more subtle borders.  I have wanted to try out this technique for many years, but never had a reason to use it until now.  It's actually quite a simple matter of blending options in Photoshop, using an inner glow or a gradient stroke.  The tricky part is going to be in the colours, and making them fit nicely into the rest of the map.  I'm considering embedding some sort of other information into the colours, rather than just having them arbitrary.  And I'm also hoping to define a visual style for this type of demographic map that will allow you to see easily at a glance what type of information it's conveying.

More on all of this in the coming months.  I'll be back with more news as work progresses.  In the meantime, check out Bruce's previews over on his blog.

Here's a handy overview of the extensive material you can get a sneak peek at:

• CC1 Beyond the Skies — project overview
• Genesis of the Briarwoods — timeline preview
• Mythologies
• Dwarven Mythology
• Khrâlia
• Krîma Ironblaze
• Previews of the Pantheons
• Gods of the Elves
• Gods of the Dwarves
• Gods of Belledor
• Gods of Caldwen
• Gods of Meryath
• Gods of Nordheim
• Gods of Phrydias
• Death and the Netherworld Part I and Part II

Great Caldera Poster Map Finished

Close to a year of work on the Great Caldera's overview map came to a head last weekend, and the map is finally complete, and entering the pre-print stage.

The area around Belledor's capital.

Exciting times for me, as this will be the first map I've ever had printed.  

Meanwhile, Bruce has posted two articles previewing the maps.  Part one covers the southern realms of the Great Caldera, while part two deals with the northern half.   He mostly concentrates on giving some background to the labels he devised for each nation.  It's a great read, with some tantalising hints of what is to come, as well as some classic Heardian humour.

I'd like to add a few comments about the creation of the art featured on these maps.

First up is the Belledor fragment at the top right, which depicts the area around Belledor's capital, Seahollow, in the province of Seafolk.

Grimsvik, capital of Nordheim.

The map is composed of numerous layers, which all come together to produce the terrain you see here.  At the base of everything is the height map, which I have posted about extensively already.  Suffice it to say that this map took about six months to design and erode at full resolution.  It is a 3D model, with sculpted mountains and valleys, rolling hills, and rivers meandering through the plains.  On top of this is a gradient map, colouring the terrain based on elevation, so that the plains and lowlands are light green, the hills are tan, and the mountains are grey-brown.  There are actually five or six of these gradient maps, allowing the painting of other terrain types such as grasslands, desert, swamp, and taiga on top of the plains.

What this means is that you can tell the elevation of any particular spot just by looking at the colours, and on the height model I can measure the exact height of any point on the map if necessary.  Mountains named on the larger scale maps (such as the hex map) refer to actual peaks visible on this map.

Central Caldwen.

Next come the sea and lake masks, and the rivers.  The sea is a simple mask derived from the base height map, coloured blue.  The rivers are also generated from the height map.  We decided on the general locations during the design process, and then let erosion create the exact shapes in a natural way.  For some areas — Alfdaín comes to mind — this took multiple attempts, and was a bit of a headache, but I'm very pleased with the final results.  Lakes were added to the height map after erosion; Bruce designed logical shapes that fit in with the river systems, and I dug them into the height map.

At this point, we haven't done any work on lake or sea beds.  That may come at some point in the future, but for now it's all just flat surfaces.

With the land and sea all done, the last three layer groups add lighting, texture, and overlays.  Lighting consists of a 3D render of the height model, which with transparency effects gives shape to the underlying terrain.  Texture is predominantly visible in the sea areas, and to a lesser extent on the land.  It is a parchment texture, designed to bring consistency to the map.  I chose not to also incorporate the colour of the parchment this time.

Alfdaín's capital, Mythuín.

Finally overlays refers to the graticule (the grid of latitude and longitude lines over the map), borders, roads, icons, scale, legend, and of course all the labels.  This layer sits on top of everything else.

I will post more about all of these things after the release.

For now, I am now putting all my efforts into the second poster map, the hex map of Meryath, which is also mostly done.  The finishing touches should be done by the end of the week.  After that, it's back to the internal maps.  These, too, are at an advanced stage of design.  Everything should come together within the next few weeks.  It will not be long now before you can hold the book and the maps in your hands.

Araldûr, home of the dwarves on Calidar.  This image shows almost exactly what the final map will look like.