Palace of Cres Stros - Map for Seth Haddon's The Crucible
The palace of Cres Stros for book the Crucible by Seth Haddon.
I developed the design of the castle into a fully functioning building, which includes service corridors for staff, guard stations (indicated by empty circles) and a water reserviour. I also have added bath rooms which are not labeled but adjacent to the quarters indicated. There are additional hedges to conceal the service areas from that of the palace visitors, and a double vault to the treasury which is only accessible by a single passage that contains permanent guards. There is also a designated training area for guards, paladins and royals, additional columns to support open areas of the stone ceilings and a secret passage exiting the hill to the north of the palace, for discrete use by members of the royal family.
Note: the book is not yet published but this map has been previewed by the author on his Kickstarter which was successfully funded in one hour! You can read more here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sethhaddon/crucible-special-hardcover-edition-queer-fantasy-romance/posts/4367184
The final submitted design, to insert into a page 6x9 inches.
The reference sent by the author for the layout of the palace.
The visualisation sketch I made to understand how the palace was laid out, and get an approximation of scale. This showed areas that needed adjustment or improvements such as enlarging the staff quarters and adding service corridors.
From the isometric sketch I charted a precise blueprint, to give me an idea of how to layout the final floorplan. I only drafted one side of this as the palace is more or less symmetrical in its layout.
I then converted the test floorplan into 1.6 larger size, working from the guidelines I laid down across the paper.
Once the basic layout was set in, I embellished with walls and other architectural details. The linework was completely straight however the curve of the camera lens doesn't convey this.
My ink drawing over the pencil lines, which I imported into Photoshop where I was able to do final minor clean up and adding a key.