Nate Mangion

experimenting with cross-section maps.

Added 2021-10-12 08:08:16 +0000 UTC

If there's one type of image I LOVE, perhaps more-so than maps, it's a good cross-section map. I've been fascinated by these types of maps since I was a child, when I first got a book of star wars cross-sections (I now have every such book made by DK, including a nice collected edition), as well as a few cross-section books by Stephen Biesty, which I adored.

Last year, after visiting a local coastal tower I was inspired to try my hand at drawing a cross-section for use in the world of Elyden, which you can find here. I learnt a lot from making that cutaway, and it was enough to not return to the concept for another year!

A recent copy of National Geographic (August 2021, gladiator) had a really nice cutaway image of a Gladiator school, which really got me fired up to try out the idea yet again, and that gave birth to the following map:

I'll be uploading a full atlas map post including a finished version of this over the coming months, once it's done, and I've already started work on others, which I'm sharing here exclusively with patrons:

These are the raw images straight out of sketchup, before I've drawn over them, but I think they give a good idea of what I've been doing. The benefit of using sketchup also means... floor maps! Whenever I post an image like this I'll also share a floor map, with 5-ft. grid, as I know how popular these can be. Something like this: