Maps of Middle-Earth

 To complete the Middle-Earth exhibit I needed to fill up the other case opposite the one holding the items. Initially I had the idea of making a basic banner/flag and having various flags and sigils from across Middle-Earth. I realised this would look good but I would have to create someway of providing information about each flag without having them inspectable (they would be too large).

I settled on the idea of having a case without any items inside it and letting the background do the work. A display of maps as though they were from Bilbo's study would make a nice addition. By grabbing an image of the study I scaled it to fit the image and darkened it to contrast the map images.

I featured two maps on this background: a map of all Middle-Earth and Thorin's map of Erebor, the Lonely Mountain, from The Hobbit. When I realised I would need a translation for the runes on the left of the second map I thought it would be cool to add the moon runes on as well.

To do this I had to get an image of the runes online that matched this scene in the film. One I had cut them out I added them to the map in white. I duplicated this layer, changed the colour to an electric blue and exported this on a black background for the emissive.

I labelled the case and each map and started work on translating the runes. There are a few versions of the translation online so I had to be careful I was getting the right one. I tried to match each line of the translation to each line of the runes as best I could. 

With the addition of the translations and labels I think this case works great on it's own without any inspectable/interactive features. The emissive also worked really well and I am glad I spent the time to add it.