I wrote the predecessor to this post in July 2017. The sad news? I never finished my pencil-and-paper city map. The good news? It took me only seven years to pick up where I left off and finish a digital version.

So, booyah. 😁

I see this as the heart of Downtown Roicester, with suburbia and factory land stretching out around it. This map still isn’t totally finished. I needed a basic lay of the land for character movement, and as I continue writing this book, I’ll fill in some of the prominent street names or figure out where certain buildings will feature as I go. Then, I’ll fill in the blanks and publish this map with the rest of my Fall of the Mantle Maps for you to peruse at your leisure.

I created this map in Photoshop with the mouse and keyboard. It’s wild, I know. Especially while I own a perfectly good drawing tablet, but there you go.

It started out really noble. I wanted to illustrate (punny) that anyone could draw a digital map—no fancy tools necessary. In the end, Photshop’s shift-key functionality was a game-changer. While holding the shift key, we can create straight horizontal or vertical lines, and if we click between two points, we’ll create a diagonal line.

Add the grid functionality, and Photoshop is a strong mapmaking tool.

I started by plotting out the basic shape of my city. This involved loads of back and forth between my books and the map. The restaurant, The Crooning Cockerel, has to be walkable from the hospital. The parade grounds and palace must be next to each other and near Warner Street. The old part of the city has to be adjacent to the market. And more.

And that’s why we draw maps before we start writing, kids. 🤣

Anyhoo. Once I had the basic plan, I drew in the main streets. There are no cars in my city. Instead, the people travel by train, automotive, and autocycle, which all run on railway tracks. I’m also really, really grateful to Past-Yolandie for writing how the characters use underground parking bays, so I didn’t need to draw in hundreds of parking lots throughout the city. That said, I included a few next to key structures.

I thought about the kinds of buildings you’d find next to each key structure. For example, you’d find loads of apartment buildings and student living around the university. It would also make sense for the university and the library to be close to each other, and so on.

I described the nobles as living closer to the palace and beyond, which means the working class likely lives behind an invisible barrier below the palace. So, the buildings grow larger and fancier towards the north of the map, and become smaller and more squashed together towards the south.

From there, I drew block by block. I started working on it in January and finished the most current version yesterday.

My hands are seriously not happy with me, but that’s the price you pay, right? Every single line was drawn with the mouse and the shift key for those straight lines. The only exceptions are curved streets, where I painstakingly plotted each curve until it looked right.

For symmetrical patches, like the gardens near the palace, I used the symmetry tool in Photoshop.

I made this gif to show my progress.

I’m really stoked with how this turned out!

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you’d like to know more about my map-making commission work.

Until next time.

Yolandie