Maps for a Friend's 8-Year Old Son

A friend of mine's 8-year old son spontaneously decided to draw a map of a fantasy world.  He asked on G+ if anyone could make it "professional".  I like making maps.  A lot.  But I'm not a professional at it - I just like dinking around with it.  So I said "yes."

This is the Raw version.

I'm using Illustrator 10 to create the new version because A) I own a copy and B) I want to de-rust my skills with it.  So I traced all the lines and added the country names.  (Yes, there is a "Kingdom of Pron" on the map.  The 8-year old probably doesn't get the reference.)

Then it needed rivers.  And a couple things on the map looked significant, so I named them.  Then I needed to show why some of the political boundaries existed (rivers, forest edges, defensive works, etc.), so I added a few more rivers.  And some mountains.  And some forests.  And some more mountains.  Now it looks like this:

Updated Version

Then I wanted to have a basic map without all the colors of the political divisions.  Luckily, Illustrator has layers, so I could do this easily.  The terrain map looks like this:

Terrain Only Map

The next step is to do a hexagon grid overlay and a few other tweaks required by my perfectionism.  Then I have to find a way to export it to .SVG format that keeps the fonts.  That way they can zoom in and things won't be pixilated.

The end result will be a map my friend can used to teach his son RPGs, a map his son designed and will know all the names.  That is a great dad.  How could I not help?

Later!