This morning, I noticed that my friend Mike Liebhold, a fellow researcher at Institute for the Future, had a beautiful and curious map on his desk. Turns out, it's a stunning replica of the map from Terry Gilliam's 1981 film Time Bandits. The map reveals the locations of "time portals," holes in the space/time fabric. Graphic designer Jon Heilman created the fantastic replica and is now selling them for $100 in the Boing Boing Bazaar. They're printed on canvas and measure 40" x 24.5". Mike spoke with Heilman and the following is some of what he said:
The history on this map began in 2001. Another fan attempted a recreation with limited references, but made a very promising start and had maps printed. This is known as a Kapow (the creator's screen name) version 1. Kapow admits it's pretty inaccurate. He received better reference material and made version 2 and 3 maps. He did not sell those in large quantities and knock-offs are rare to non-existent. Two other fans made their own maps and sold them in various runs. Kapow received a very rough scan off an original map for his version 3 and it's pretty accurate. The others used the same references I used for mine. The newest DVD of Time Bandits contains a small foldout of an actual screen-used map. It's very beat up, has lots of weathering and seems to have been poorly assembled from multiple scans (probably made by simply placing the map on a flatbed scanner) so that some details are lost or misaligned. Also, the clock panels are completely cut off. However, this scan combined with a couple images from books I have plus every screen capture I could make served as enough reference material to create a very accurate replica. A gentleman in California who assisted Kapow with his version 3 offered guidance in accurizing the color scheme a bit and has since purchased 4 of my maps and claims it's the most accurate replica he's seen to date. I began creating mine in January this year and it took about two months. I have studied the film and every printed reference source I could find to create this replica and it is very accurate to the screen-used map. It has been drawn completely in Photoshop with the goal to create a replica that looks hand-drawn. The file is enormous containing 188 layers with a file size of 1.72 GB. This level of fine detail is replicated using the highest quality printer available.
UPDATE: Adam Savage of Mythbusters emails:
The "gentleman in California" that is referred to is me. I've been obsessed with this map FOREVER! I did help with advice about the overall colors, and actually did the clocks on one of Kapow's versions. I do indeed own 4 of these, in addition to 3 of Kapow's and the one that I painted for myself when I was 19. Some time ago, Gilliam was given one of these.
