So, I’m finally done. I created my own star map, covering Human Space as I will cover it in my science fiction series.
Final Star Map: Overview
This image was scaled down considerably; the original is at 200dpi – 6622×4677 pixel. It’s 72MB in size as a PNG file. Here are some 800x800px crops from the main map:
Star Map: Region around Terra
Star Map: The Sword Worlds
Star Map: Empire
Star Map: Federation-Imperial Border
Star Map: Seals
I’ve worked on this map on and off for three years, taking some detours in between. In the end I learned a whole lot, and I think i can honestly say, improved as a mapmaker and graphics person. I will never compete with the true professionals, but just consider these early versions of the map:
First Version: The Milky Way Galaxy. This was actually a trace of a NASA image, and I was really just experimenting.
How it all began: At first, I attempted to draw a basic Galaxy...
Second Version: Zooming In. An entire Galaxy is an awful lot of real estate. So I began to zoom in on the Region around Earth. It was still a very crude map.
Spiral Arms: Closing in on the Target
Third Version: The Orion Spur. At this stage I began to nail down the setting. You see an early draft of the political situation in this image.
Orion Spur: Early design of the interstellar nations
Fourth Version: Human Space, Revisited. As the old map wasn’t really working out, and was ugly to boot. I started a new version from scratch. It was based on a solid timeline and a detailed setting design. At this stage, the map was very basic.
Human Space: The Next Generation
Fifth Version: Let there be Color. The next two images are just later versions of the above; as you can see I added a great deal of detail over time. The second map probably has 200 named star systems – that’s a guesstimate, I did not recount them.
Human Space: With Colors
Human Space: Colorful and detailed
Sixth Version: Near Space Distraction. At one point, I began to doubt my design – and decided to go more small scale. I began to map out individual star systems near Earth based on Hipparcos data. In the end, I abandoned this approach – the setting wasn’t bad, but I felt it did not really match what I had in mind.
Near Stars: A New Attempt
Near Stars: Overwhelmed by Data
The Near Star Map’s styletests, of which this was the last, showed me that I wanted a map that was not just functional. Working on the style tests taught me a lot.
Near Stars: Style Test v7
Seventh Version: Back to Square One, Just Prettier. After I discarded the Near Space idea, I reset certain things, changed some assumptions, and experimented with a galactic map. This was the result.
A New Milky Way Galaxy
A New Milky Way Galaxy Zoomed In
Eight Version: Full Circle. I liked the techniques I was starting to develop, but as in the very beginning, decided that an entire galaxy was just too much space. I zoomed in and concentrated on the Orion Spur. The rest, as they say, is Galactic history. Here is an early version of the map that I completed this week:
The Orion Spur, Again
And the future?
This map is done – but that doesn’t mean I won’t work on it. The settings needs to be built, detailed maps for at least some regions need to be produced, and of course the entire thing will continue to evolve. In another three years this map will probably not look the same.
The Lego Designer can also generate building instructions for the models you design. I am really very, very impressed by that software.
To assign this ship a scale – it would be a small transport, perhaps used by corporations, governments, and adventurers’ groups to bring a small team to where ever the action is. It wouldn’t be much bigger than, say, a 727 or so.
The Lego designer estimates the price of this model at 18 Euro. I’ll definitely order a custom Lego set sooner or later, I just want to do so with a better design than this…
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