A little over a month ago I started work on a custom board based on the original design of the Spring 1942 board. I spent about 4 hours every morning and four hours each night for a whole week designing the new map. It is 55 inches by 36 inches.
It started off with me taking the original board and taking several pictures of it. I took a single photo of each of the six panels, and closeups of the production chart, mobilization zone and of course took a top-down image as you see here.
c8b9168d-27a7-4bc2-b885-a10a971c2bff-image.png
I used this top-down image as the reference to start outlining. I knew that there was a lot of distortion from the photo I took, but that’s no matter to me, it adds to the character if things don’t look 100% accurate.
2c2344fc-177a-42f3-90a3-abaf0091cf88-image.png
After the fourth night, I officially had completed the outlining. I wanted to keep all of the coastal details that were in the original game. I knew based off geological maps that the coastlines in this game look almost nothing like the real ones, but it was too big of a detail to not keep.
8885b255-fa7d-4335-938e-a3829517c7e4-image.png
After the outlining was done, I threw over some kinda decent textures into each zone and blended wooded to desert areas. It was so fast of a thing to do that I didn’t get progress pictures. This photo however shows some of the zone colors I decided to do, and the art direction I took.
7b94be2b-2568-44c6-af0e-c7f49698d28a-image.png
I added in the text and logo designs, altered the filters I threw over the map and ended up with this as a somewhat final product.
e6e788af-d0f7-4e46-930e-17773bb7206a-image.png
Here is a picture of the entire map completed that also featured a similar under-running board. Each side has their own IPC chart, the battle strip is integrated, the casualty zone is integrated and the mobilization zone is updated and integrated.
b49e04fd-61da-4c60-920e-4965e94ab01f-image.png
This photo shows what the original board looks like with some units in Germany. Note how there’s little room.
fbb65416-62f7-4226-a75f-8383dd929c49-image.png
Here’s the same location on the game but on my laptop, zoomed for size and the same units are placed on it. Much larger!
4c821ea1-75a6-45b3-98d9-7fa34ba09dad-image.png
The next step was to go to www.bagsoflove.com and order a testing sheet of the Neoprene so I could confirm the print quality. It arrived and everything was to size and looked great!
5da6d2a5-28d7-40a1-8327-8ec25266f294-image.png
Ordered the full sized Neoprene Mat they sell and it arrived today! Here’s the original board for comparison.
9985a7bc-424a-4f41-b30a-c797ee33da5c-image.png
Here’s an image of American units in the Congo and the nearby seazone on the original board.
f59bff64-bd16-4283-ad2d-b9b6e51887ae-image.png
Here’s an image of the new map with the same zones and units. It’s so much bigger and I’m in love!
34d195b8-a407-4984-b4c5-414abd877613-image.png
Here’s an image of the full map as well.
51f1b245-5167-49ab-9697-58fd68fc58ee-image.png
If you guys want to use this design, here’s a Google Drive link you can use to download it. It should be 11,000 x 7,200 with 200 x 200 per inch. Bags of Love did a great job with the print, however they took out the 5 pixel black border I had around it but that’s no matter to me! Be sure if you use Bags of Love, make sure it’s printed on a white background so you can keep that border but it doesn’t change much of the map if it is gone. A number of places aren’t fond of this size of project, so please do your own research before going with your service of choice. Enjoy this map! It is heavily inspired by Imperious Leader’s design, more of the fact he did it rather the actual design.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RH0c_ReZzLAPoVjSpeeBOIDnYbkZIOHC/view
