Based on the inspirational material I made a fast conceptual sketch with the main idea of the project to prove the concept. That also was going to be used in the first version of the exhibition catalog.

To be able to paint the different map fragments into a common map, I divided the rings into centuries and divided them into 4 parts representing 25 years. I also worked with the idea of different sectors.

The first iteration low-resolution version

Next version a bit more details but, the division between the sectors was not satisfying since it just looked like fragments individually being put together without any internal consideration about the connected parts or the whole. This needs to be changed

Bump and displacemapped in Softimage to get some ideas of the “3d” effect, still, it looks really plat and 2d.

Note from the future. In the final version, the sectors were excluded and the rings were scaled up from the center and out incrementally in Adobe Illustrator, and became an integrated part in the final version of the worlddisc for the ideal spaces exhibition

With this as a template, I started painting/drawing the 12th century with inspiration from the maps also included in this screenshot.