The Art of Andrew V

Tag: 2D

  • Kael Anosh

    Kael Anosh

    Another map for Soulmist. This is for the city of the vampiric race ‘Primus’. The Primus have established three major cities on the continent but Kael Anosh is the only city that the Primus allow to interacts with other races—and only at their discretion. Once per year, as the tides shift, the city briefly transforms into a bustling trade hub. During this time, other races are permitted to establish a marketplace outside the city walls, provided they respect its strict laws. To accommodate visiting merchants, the Primus have built guest housing, also outside the walls, which can be rented for the duration of their stay.

    Inside the city, three key locations define its identity:

    • The Onyx Flower – The only academy of blood magic in Kael Anosh and the most important institution in the city.
    • The Disc of Ascension – A grand theater and opera stage, serving as the cultural heart of the Primus.
    • The Mausoleum – A sacred site where the Primus venerate their sleeping or departed elders.

    The Challenges of Mapping Kael Anosh

    Creating this map required an extensive number of assets to accurately depict the city’s intricate layout while maintaining visual diversity. To avoid repetitive patterns, I designed six different common buildings for most of the city and three distinct structures for the noble families. The rest such as the Onyx Flower are unique assets. Each of these was carefully placed by hand.

    Beyond the residential areas, additional assets were needed to illustrate the market, city walls, docks, ships, natural rock formations, and other details. As the project progressed, the required level of detail shifted—each asset became smaller on the canvas, yet many retained a higher level of intricacy than was ultimately necessary.

    The Process

    The assets were modeled in Blender and rendered in an isometric view using a simple ambient occlusion shader. The renders were then imported into Krita, where they were drawn over and gradually refined to achieve the final visual style. The decorative borders were created using Inkscape.

  • Map of Fyera

    Map of Fyera

    This is the original design for the map of Fyera, created for the Soulmist 5e tabletop role-playing game.

    Fyera is a dark fantasy world with strong post-apocalyptic elements, set on a planet that no longer rotates on its axis. The landscape is filled with inhospitable regions, and the few remaining denizens must constantly struggle for survival—whether against the invading forces of the Darklands or each other.

    The creator of the Soulmist IP was deeply inspired by The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien’s works as a whole. My goal for this project was to emulate the distinctive look of the Middle-earth map while adapting it to the unique geography of this setting, as outlined in the project brief.

    The landmass depicted is roughly the size of a small continent. On the far western edge of the map lie the Lands of the Old Days, a sun-scorched wasteland that remains in daylight year-round. On the far eastern side are the Darklands, a region forever shrouded in darkness.

    The Challenges of Mapping Fyera

    The foundation of the map was created using Wonderdraft and later refined in Krita, taking approximately a full working week to complete. One of the greatest challenges was achieving a proper sense of scale—especially in regions with dense visual details, such as the southern rainforest-like territory of Draxes. While striving to maintain the aesthetic of The Lord of the Rings movie maps, I had to carefully balance intricate asset placement with overall readability.

    Lessons Learned

    This was the first map I ever created, and it came with valuable lessons. One key takeaway was realizing that a small number of well-placed assets can effectively convey an environment. For example, a dense forest doesn’t require hundreds of individual tree icons to be visually convincing. While the style I was emulating does rely on numerous assets to depict forests and mountain ranges, I now see the value of using them more sparingly in future projects to improve clarity and efficiency.

    Another key lesson I learned was the importance of incorporating more waterways—rivers, streams, and other bodies of water—throughout the map. Given that this represents a vast continent, the relative lack of major rivers makes the landscape feel less believable and distorts the intended sense of scale.

    While this map is meant to be an in-universe artistic rendition rather than an accurate navigational tool, small details like additional river systems would have significantly improved its realism and cohesion.