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So I've been on a long Christmas Break haha!!
Well, I have been working on something awesome that I wanna share with you guys.
It's my new map of Abatral.

I expanded it from a normal piece of white printer paper to a huge map with a grid on it.  Take a look as I explain the parts with the pictures I took as I created this piece of work.

The Original Map

So for starters, I took the original map and traced over the land masses.  I scanned that into my computer.  Then I inserted an 8x8 table over it, using Microsoft Word.  Then I took a screenshot on my computer to get this picture.  I printed it off to use as a visual guide.  

Then my dad, being the amazing guy he is, got me this huge roll of paper.  This was the worse part because I don't really like math.  haha.  At least I know how to do it though 😏
I had to figure out how big the little squares on my grid sheet that I had printed off was.  Then I incorporated that to the bigger map by multiplying by 6.  That was how I made the small squares.
To be honest, I guess the math wasn't the hardest part 😅
The hardest part probably was drawing a straight line!  Took me awhile and finally I just got a yard stick to help me out.

After the long process of drawing the squares, I finally moved on to draw the shapes of the continents and islands on the big map.  I even added smaller islands to fill the white spaces on the map to make it feel more realistic.  Then, of course, I drew my weird compass  😅

After that, it was straight to work.  I started with the Saphid Kingdom's stuff first.  The shaded portion on there are actually little circles to represent trees.  So all the shaded parts you see on this picture and the rest of the pictures represents forests or woodland... there was a lot 😧

Here's a closer look at the Aona Islands controlled by the Saphids.

Here is the Great Library.  The location is supposed to be where all knowledge is stored by the Dragons and other intelligent creatures.

This is the Viius Islands.  The three islands are kind of the biggest symbolism in the world.  The island called Bos is the one in the Northeast, with the volcano and barren lands.  The Island called Dor is the one in the Southwest, with the forests and river.  The remaining island is called Viius Island, where the Temple of Viius is located, the most sacred place in the Realm.

To give you an idea of the maps progression, here's what the whole map looks like from an overhead view so far.

Here is the Goryon Kingdom in the Far North.  The location is where the Goryon live.  Goryon's are humanoid Creatures born of a humanoid race and a Dragon Lord (Dragon Lords have the magical ability to morph into other creatures - I kinda think of the Dragons as the Greek Gods and the Goryon as Demigods).

Here's another look at the whole map.

This is Dokel, the island where the Okreds live.  Take note that there are three active Volcanoes on the island.  The other large chunks of islands were supposed to originally be a part of the main island of Dokel but broke off due to violent earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions.  It is mostly a barren landscape, except for the southern part of the island.  

Here's another look at the whole map.  It was coming along pretty well.  Right about here, I took a break for a couple days because it was Christmas weekend.  

And then I moved on into the biggest landmass.  I was concerned about how long it would take me to do this, but I got 'er done 😏
The Fields of Darkness have their own history.  If you read some of my previous posts about the history of Abatral you'd recognize the name because it is deeply connected to the Abatral God Lumir and the Aidis.
The Elvish Kingdom is surrounded by the Mountains - I have yet to name them 😊
Their capital is tucked neatly within the mountains, though, giving them a natural border and wall.  Take notice that a wall was constructed by the Elves in the Northeast.  Also, I decided to add a river and a lake, to get rid of some white space.

Then I kinda went on spree 😏
I drew the Dwarvish Kingdom first.  Then I drew the huge river and the multiple lakes.  I even connected the river running from the Elvish Kingdom to the river that ran from the Dwarvish Kingdom.  I put some hilly area in the Northern part of the Human Kingdom.  Then I added the four major cities from the original map on the bigger map.  Then I added the Capital city of Enochai.

Then came the most annoying and hardest part of the map.  Drawing all the trees.  If you didn't know, drawing a ton of little circles is ridiculous.  There was a point where I almost gave up even.  But I looked at the entire map and saw all that I had done, and I was like, "Well I've come this far.  Might as well finish it."  😏😆
So I did.  I added a few other small towns to the map, to fill in the white spaces.  Then I went back through the entire map and added bridges that crossed over the rivers.

And finally, I had my end result.  I decided to color in the rivers across the map, to make them pop out.  I was almost ready to color the trees in with a green color, to distinguish them as trees, but I knew that if I did that, then all that shaded-in area on the map would look a nasty color.

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So yeah.  It was a ton of fun, and being able to look at it now is amazing.  I love it and know that I'll be able to use it for my stories.  I plan on using pictures of individual locations (i.e. the Elvish Kingdom) when I write the history of the people.  I've already started on working on the history of Mankind.  I'm writing it, using the timeline of events given by the different Aidis', as most the things that happen in the Realm of Abatral often revolve around the Aidis.  The coolest thing I did while writing the history of Mankind was naming the different locations on the map.  I probably use some picture editor to write in the locations on the map.

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My biggest and only mistake that I feel like I made was writing the names of the places in black marker.  This is because I know that I could have just put the pictures on my computer and then add the names of places with some cool font or something.  Oh well.  I love and think it looks cool.  Take a look at the old and new map:

Hope you all had an epic Christmas and New Years!!

I plan on going back to my regular post schedule,

if you can call it regular 😁

Have an awesome day!!

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All parts of the map are drawn by me (and I'm pretty proud to say that 😏)

However, a big shout out to Microsoft for their Word Program,
And an EPIC SHOUT OUT to Fantasy Name Generators and their Map Creator.  I took a couple of their items for mountains and stuff and taught myself how to draw them.  So huge shout out to that website.