These started life as fairly mundane supplied maps with local SCA land groups marked out, and I was asked to “period-ify” them for the EK site. My first thought was “HOLY HANDBAGS I don’t have time to get materials and draw these things out, marking the baronies and cantons and such!” So I put it aside.

A little later, I realized that because I know the Photoshops, I might be able to work with the borders in the original, but refine them back from “clearly digital in nature” to “looks like ink”. I did a few tests, and combined with a lovely old paper texture I have in my creative arsenal, I found a relatively quick and painless way to go from modern map to ancient cartography. The group names are typeset in a lovely font called Dei Gratia. The images were produced with clear backgrounds so we only needed to code one popup with the background in it, and the four separate maps are includes based on which link is clicked.