# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Regional/World Mapping >  WIP - Malazan World Map

## Sadist

Hey all, I posted a little quicky map of the Malazan world a little while ago.  After getting some critique and then going through and looking at some of the other maps on here, I realized that it was just WAY under par...so
this is my new project.  I'm working on it section by section as the end file size is just too large.
This is the continent of Genabackis from the Malazan Book of the Fallen series.
I've decided to try and go for a more of a stylized yet real satellite view on this, so here are two pics.
I used the actual maps from the book as an overlay so I could get the geologic elements in the right positions, the rest is based off of the previous map which is in turn based off of Werthead's.
This is just the first couple of steps...I'm hoping to go through and refine all of the features as it moves along.
any input and help or tips from everyone would be much appreciated!
Cheers!

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## tilt

A good start, it does look however as if mr. Erikson neven had a visit from the river police, but then again the map in the books is so compressed its hard to really see where the rivers go. Just remember that rivers don't split - they only come together and by the easiest route finds the ocean  :Smile: 
I don't know if this picture is in full size, but if it is, I would probably go a bit up in size to get in more details - but then again- thats me, love details  :Smile:

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## Sadist

hmm...I'll have to go through the rivers and take a look, but what I can tell they mostly seem to be coming down and joing from mountains and hilly areas into lakes and such...
this isn't actually the full size, it will be much larger, I just compressed it a bit because this was just the initial render.
more details to come!

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## Sadist

some more detail work, not quite there yet, threw in a quick ocean layer to see the coastline better, although that still needs some more work, I'm pretty happy with how the lakes are turning out though.  I'm not quite happy with the forest areas yet...think they need some more definition...maybe a border or something

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## Steel General

Indeed a good start, you can try putting a bit of drop-shadow on your  forests to give them a bit of depth.

It appears that some of your rivers aren't quite reaching the coast, don't have a map in front of me so not sure if that's the way they are supposed to be or not.

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## Will Phillips

MALAZAN FTW

That is all. Carry on the good work.

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## Sadist

cool, thanks Imperial, and thanks for the feedback from Tilt and Steel General. 
I went through and checked out all the rivers and made a few adjustments (although either not on the original map or not clear enough to see)
One thing that was REALLY bothering me were the forested areas, then I realized it's because there weren't enough of them, taking a little bit of liberty, also considering the style of map from Erikson would not actually show forests as you might view them from space but rather their general areas, I expanded the original forest areas and added MOAR!
I think it looks much better. 
Although I will definitely add in a few more details, especially in the southern region where I kind of just have to guess anyway.  I'm probably going to leave this as it is for the moment and let you all nit pick at it while I start work on the other continents.  I want to maintain the same basic texturing styles throughout before I go in to much more detail work.

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## tilt

looking really good - there are two lakes that empty out in two rivers, where they should only use one, the northern one is easy to fix - just cut of the northern of the rivers - that way the river don't go over the mountain either  :Wink: 
I personally like a litte more height on the mountains.  :Smile: 
And now I got a sudden urge to map Darujhistan *lol*... but allready got my hands full with my own city Breakwater  :Smile:

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## Sadist

And Breakwater is indeed a worthy venture...
I'll check on those rivers...
are you talking about the northern-most pair where the river runs out of a spring into a lake and then out of the lake into another lake?
I think I see a couple of other areas, while, on the original map, just won't work...
Frickin River Police!  :Razz: 

I'll probably go over certain areas on the mountains and layer them up, what's there now is just a basic "mountainy" feel

I was actually thinking about mapping a couple of the cities, it might help me get my teeth into city mapping.
Although, Darujistan is quite large, and will take a lot of research to get each district with the proper buildings mapped out  :Frown:

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## tilt

LOL ..yep, but in your defense, Erikson should have had a visit from the river police also... writers gone wild..  :Wink: 
I'm only 264 pages into the first book - so Darujistan is the first city (after Pale) I know about  :Smile:

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## Sadist

latest progress, 35% scale
and I know the rivers aren't quite proper yet, blame the author (lol)
everything's stretched a bit because at their current locations, they would be too distorted on a globe, 
so I did my best to stretch things in a similar way to Gaia's world map
waddya think?
any ideas. suggestions?

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## Diamond

I could never get into those books; they were incomprehensibly boring to me.  But that map is fantastic.  That's going to be something special when you're done.

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## tilt

Read the foreword in the first one - where the author himself said that his books weren't for everyone, but if you "survived" the first third of the book, you'd probably like it  :Wink:

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## Sadist

lol, that's about right, I had to survive the first 3rd of each one of those books, they do tend start out slow, but once I got into them I couldn't put it down.

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## Black Winged Lord

Amazing work Sadist. Had to come have a proper look.

Gonna be great complete, and just hope SE can drop a few tidbits here and there to help with the unknowns.

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## Sadist

> Amazing work Sadist. Had to come have a proper look.
> 
> Gonna be great complete, and just hope SE can drop a few tidbits here and there to help with the unknowns.


that would be absolutely wonderful...I was thinking about emailing him, I'd really like this to be as accurate as possible

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## Sadist

here's the most recent work, I lightened up the whole thing just a bit, makes some of the details easier to see, some of the rivers aren't meeting up with the ocean at the moment (I'm working on it) also some of the mountains and things aren't showing up quite right, I'll work on those too
any CnC you guys might have is most welcome!

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## Will Phillips

> here's the most recent work, I lightened up the whole thing just a bit, makes some of the details easier to see, some of the rivers aren't meeting up with the ocean at the moment (I'm working on it) also some of the mountains and things aren't showing up quite right, I'll work on those too
> any CnC you guys might have is most welcome!


I can't view the attachment at a bigger size - the image says it cannot be displayed because it has errors.. ::shrug::

But, I really dig what I've seen so far. Fantastic stuff. The scale reminds me of a similarly fancy map somebody did of the Warhammer world a few years ago.

And please, pretty pretty please, include the Bridgeburner symbol in the legend whenever you get to wrapping up this map!

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## Sadist

> I can't view the attachment at a bigger size - the image says it cannot be displayed because it has errors.. ::shrug::
> 
> But, I really dig what I've seen so far. Fantastic stuff. The scale reminds me of a similarly fancy map somebody did of the Warhammer world a few years ago.
> 
> And please, pretty pretty please, include the Bridgeburner symbol in the legend whenever you get to wrapping up this map!


oh no! I'll try to re-upload it

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## Sadist

I'll try re-uploading it

in the meantime here is a link:

http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/3184/malazmap.jpg

Oh and yes! wait, Bridgebruner or Bonehunter? I don't remember the Bridgeburner symbols being described, but I might have just forgot about it

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## Will Phillips

> I'll try re-uploading it
> 
> in the meantime here is a link:
> 
> http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/3184/malazmap.jpg
> 
> Oh and yes! wait, Bridgebruner or Bonehunter? I don't remember the Bridgeburner symbols being described, but I might have just forgot about it


A bridge with ruby flames behind it, iirc...

And unfortunately, I'm getting the same error with that image. Might be a problem when you saved it out into .jpg format from Photoshop.

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## Sadist

really?  the link is working for me...
I'll try re-saving it and see if it works then

are you sure it won't load up?

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## tilt

it loads fine here  :Smile:

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## Sadist

k, so any cnc's?

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## tilt

sorry - studying for my exam tomorrow - so I'm sort of hit and running on the forum today ... but have had time to post a bit, and upload my first digital art piece on Deviant Art - gotta take a break once in a while  :Wink: 
It looked really cool - took a long time loading... the moutains looked a bit pixelated however - but maybe that was compression?
AND - now, as I tried to look at it again, it will only load the top 25% of the map  :Frown:

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## Diamond

Yeah, I'm seeing a massive amount of pixelation on the mountains on the eastern continent.  Mountains elsewhere look fine (like on that central island), but for some reason the ones on the eastern landmass look funky.

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## Sadist

hmm...might have been a problem with the upload, that or I was too sleepy and forgot about them  :Frown: 
is anyone still having problems opening it?

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## Steel General

No problems opening the file, but I agree about the pixellation on some of the mountains.

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## Sadist

here's some recent work...
now that I think about it I should have named this thread some thing like Malazan World Map, seeing as Genabackis and Seven Cities are only continents
OH WELL
Started putting in some names, and playing around with the terrain on the eastern side of 7 Cities.
Some of the hills still might look a bit pixelated, that's because I haven't finished building the layers up yet
I really want to see how easy it is for everyone to read the labels, still don't have everything in there yet, 
but I thought I'd go ahead and throw this up here and see if I can get some feedback
Cheers!

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## tilt

the small labels are easy to read, the bigger red ones, are to dark in comparrison - especially since they are the more important cities, so perhaps you should lower the "dominance" of the small cities and raise the visibility of the large cities  :Smile:

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## Sadist

ahh, ok!
that makes sense

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## Steel General

I've renamed the thread for you.

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## Sadist

Thanks SG! have some rep!

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## Scotia

> the small labels are easy to read, the bigger red ones, are to dark in comparrison - especially since they are the more important cities, so perhaps you should lower the "dominance" of the small cities and raise the visibility of the large cities


Maybe just reduce the brightness of the glow mapping on the smaller cities or adding a brighter glow around the major city labels would do the trick. I really like this map, though.

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## Sadist

here's the most recent update
finished putting in most of the place names
and started making some custom emblems!


Here's the direct link in case the other one doesn't work

http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/4580/quonand7.jpg

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## tilt

wow... that's a lot of name... you have a big job ahead of you  :Smile:  - but looking good

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## Werthead

The official map of the north coast of Korel has now been released. From the size of Korel compared to Malaz Island, Korel is a very small continent, smaller even than Quon Tali.



Not sure if Sadist is still pressing on with this project, but this can only be of help!

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## Werthead

Hopefully Sadist will one day return to the project. In the meantime, here's my own (pretty rubbish) Malazan world map, which is apparently the closest we've got so far to the real thing (the continent shapes and locations are based on a very rough map supplied by Steven Erikson himself).

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## Tigon

Well do me sideways with a wotsit! For some reason I always had it in my mind that the Lether continent was at a more northerly latitude than Quon Tali, with Seven Cities south of it... duh... Wonder why there's Ice along the equatorial belt. Warren stuff? Omtose Phellack is it that the Jaghut are connected with? Probably why I thought the latitudes were other than they are.

Lovely stuff though. And as for the books, yeah, love them myself but they're like Marmite: if you don't get used to it/them pretty quickly you're likely to think those that have are a bit mad.  :Very Happy:

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## TregMallin

> Hopefully Sadist will one day return to the project.


Prod and pull.  And a nice map in your own right!

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## hansebee

kudos to Sadist. Quite talented, great job so far I think, I hope the world bestows much time for your project on you.  :Smile:

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