A handmade The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild map with topographical features has been created by photographer Mason Drumm. After crafting the map by hand, he created a short video piece that showcased the map in the style of the Game of Thrones opening. After that short vignette, the video went behind the scenes to show just how this cool project was created.
Photographer Mason Drumm is a massive fan of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and that led him to take on a project to make a topographical map of the game's world. He started off with a projected image and then used that to figure out the various elevations. Slices of foam board were used to make a mockup, and these pieces of foam were used to trace out the shapes on plywood. It sounds simple enough, but that was only the beginning of the journey.
The Hard Work Behind the Handmade Breath of the Wild Map
The plywood began to be assembled, but the construction didn't end there. There is plenty of water features in the latest incarnation of Hyrule and transfer paper had to be used to ensure that these areas of detail were preserved. The various rivers and lakes were then carved out with a router and filled in with colored epoxy to give the illusion of real water in this Breath of the Wild map. Unfortunately, a difference between the pigments had different bodies of water end up being slightly different colors.Once the epoxy was poured, it came time to do some sanding. A lot of sanding. Epoxy doesn't always rest evenly, and the only thing that's going to make things look nice is a liberal application of elbow grease. After a liberal application of stain and a bit of weathering, Mason Drumm created the map key for the bottom-left corner in photoshop, applied it to some scrap metal, and screwed it onto the board.
In total, this project took Mason Drumm more than 70 hours to complete — and that was with help from his father. You can see this wonderful handmade Breath of the Wild map in the video below. Be sure to check out Mason Drumm's YouTube channel Making Things With Cameras for more cool photography videos.
What do you think of this handmade The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild map? Let us know in the comments below!
