“I’ve Always Been Into Weird Fish”
Fantasy maps and more with artist Marten Norr
Just as I was wondering whether my forthcoming high fantasy novel Maej would need a map (the universe’s answer: something about bears, something about woods), I was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of artist, novelist, and fabulous human Marten Norr, who agreed to take on the project.
Working with him was a delight, and the map he drew bowled me over, so I asked him to talk with me about creating the Maej map and about his work more generally. If you’ve ever thought about commissioning art for a project, read on to learn how one pro does it.
DS: The map you drew for Maej had me smitten from the first draft. How did you arrive at the concept for it?
MN: I was fortunate that you had a wealth of information I could draw from, pun intended. The concept for the map mainly came directly from the reference images and sketches you provided, including the top-down topographical map, which I found extremely helpful to visualize where all of the different peaks and landmarks were.
You also provided inspiration from maps in real life, and we were both quite fond of the looks of medieval Asian and Middle Eastern maps, in which the buildings and landscapes had a kind of isographic scale — that is, top down but…