Walking through the bustling crowds of 49,000 Gen Con Indy attendees in August 2013, the art work of Jared Blando made Kyle Poole, the creator of Shadow Era, stop in his tracks.

"When I saw Jared's cartography work at his booth, I only had two questions for him," Kyle explains. "Do you take commission work? And how long would it take? I knew we had found our creator of Balor!" A quick look at Jared’s gallery of artwork on his website and it evident that it was Jared's signature style of beautiful, aged, and detailed maps that drew Kyle in.

Cartography wasn't always Jared's main focus. He originally started at University of the Arts in Philadelphia studying animation. His professor was impressed with his drawing techniques and encouraged him to get into illustration. Jared is now a freelance illustrator, working on concepts and cartography commissions for board games and RPG companies. Working mostly in Photoshop, he uses the digital realm to its full capabilities. Utilizing his background in traditional media, he gives his cartography work an organic feel by creating his own textures and brushes in Photoshop to simulate the look and feel of water colors and oil paints. Some cartographers create their own stamps, for different mountains within a mountain range for example. However even with a number of these different stamps, repetition in the map can stand out. "I generally don't use stamps. I go the old school route in Photoshop where I hand draw the map out and then paint it up," said Jared. While more time consuming than using stamps, the end result is the staggering amount of detail that Jared is known for.

For the map of Balor, the Shadow Era design team first simply provided color coded towns and landmarks for the different continents in a crude sketch. "With the success of our Kickstarter campaign we can bring a new Campaign Mode which will shed light on the Heroes' backstories. The map of Balor is going to be integral to this, so we wanted it to have an authentic feel to really bring the lore to life," said Kyle.



Working with the layout the design team provided and the backstory of Balor, the landscape started to take shape. "From that stage I just thought 'if someone from that culture was going commission a map like this, what else would be included?' It was too barren and I needed to make the piece look old and careworn, yet still full of power and majesty. From there I added in smaller towns and things like roads and highways, along with plenty of glyphs and faded writings that only a person of that universe would fully understand. Then I worked to give the parchment an aged feel."

The end result is a gorgeous map of Balor that looks like it may have been passed down by Arthyle himself. "Take a look at the poster size resolution of the map of Balor. Zoom in on different parts of the map and you're going to be blown away by the level of detail!" exclaimed Kyle.

Be sure to stop by Jared Blando's booth at Gen Con 2014 and check out his webpage.


Download links:
Print resolution, poster size (83mb)
2880x1920 for desktop backgrounds