The Rithmatist - Isles Map

Final version of the map illustrated for Brandon Sanderson's novel The Rithmatist. It's out on the shelves now, and I enjoyed the hell out of it.

Brandon devised the United Isles as part of an alternate-world Earth that's quite different than our own (note for the hardcore Sanderson fans: as an alternate Earth, the world of The Rithmatist is not a part of the Cosmere universe). It's significantly smaller in size (that scale reference is accurate, we went around several times before settling on it) and the Koreans rule an Empire that covers most of Europe and Asia. King James of Britannia fled when his lands were conquered, and founded the United Isles before discovering the magic of Rithmatics, some 200 years before the events of the novel.

This map was designed (as many things in Sanderson's novels are) as an "in-world item". In this case, it represents the sort of document you might see in a middle-school textbook or on the wall of a classroom. It's fairly simple, delineating the 60 Isles and the location of the eight Academies. There's a bunch of other fun details for fans of the novel, such as the use of nine-point gears and six-point circles. And for Ink fans, there's two hidden logos. Well, not super-hidden.

You can check out a progression of the map, to see the various stages of development, here:



Illustrated in Manga Studio EX v.3 using le Cintiq 21UX. © 2012 Brandon Sanderson and Dragonsteel Entertainment LLC, reprinted with permission.