Everyone is welcome to participate! In a nutshell, this is a friendly challenge to all mapmakers or aspiring mapmakers to create a map of a certain pre-chosen location.
The purpose:
- I'm not offering any prizes here, nor is a winner (or loser) going to be declared. This thing is purely for fun.
- The purpose is to practice your skills, experiment with new techniques, compare styles and tricks with others and maybe learn new things in the process.
- This is supposed to be a friendly event, so let's keep it civil. Constructive criticism on other people's work is of course allowed, but no overly nasty comments, ok? Even if you think someone's work sucks, try to keep in mind the friendly spirit of the event.
Ok, here's how it works:
- Everyone is free to participate, no matter your skill level, number of maps made (if any), age, gender, social status, etc.
- The idea is to take the map I post, trace it and create your own graphical representation of it - not a playable map, just a plain, nice, pretty map image.
- The graphical style of the map is up to you. It doesn't have to be hugely accurate either, and you can decide what features you want to include.
- In the spirit of this event, it's recommended to make your map image the same, or close to same size as the original traceable map image. Having some constraints adds to the challenge of the event.
- There is no strict deadline for participation, but it'd be nice if everyone could post their work within a week from this post.
- You are free to submit multiple entries. You can also modify your entries and post multiple versions of them, or post early versions and ask for opinions.
- I'd prefer each entry to be made by a single person. The point is to challenge your personal skills, so collaborations can wait for another event.
The map to be traced:
For this event, I have chosen a map of Kaliningrad Oblast (an exclave of Russia) to be the subject. I've chosen a compact-sized map for tracing, which shows a lot of features, but like said, you can choose which ones to include.
The whole Kaliningrad Oblast should be shown in your map image. Note that the purple line is the border of the actual Oblast, the rest is neighbouring countries. Thematically you can do whatever you want with it, as long as the Kaliningrad Oblast is shown in the map in whole.
Here is the traceable image:
- Click image to enlarge.
Direct link to the image: http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/3733/kaliningrad.png
So without further ado, good luck to all participants. Let's see some interesting, funny, impressive, weird, beautiful and creative artwork. And above all,
Have fun!
