A Darlington dad has gone from stacking shelves to mapping elves after quitting his job at Aldi to become a full-time fantasy map maker.
Chris Birse, 39, has been making the Tolkien-inspired maps for seven years now, and what started out as a side hustle became a full-time job when he quit his job as a manager at Aldi to run a business making Lord of the Rings-themed maps for British counties.
"I was writing my own fantasy novel and I needed a map to show where the characters were from," he said, explaining how the business was born.
"A few years later, I was juggling this and Aldi and this was more enjoyable than stacking shelves, so that had to go."
Starting out with Teesside, the Darlington dad-of-one has now completed every single English county and is settling into a rhythm of the Scottish municipalities after gaining traction online from his recently finished Edinburgh map.
His fixation on The Lord of the Rings, while not 'obsessive' he said, started when he was taken to see one of the early 2000s movies on a school trip. And he's never looked back. "It's one of my favourite film series of all time," he said.
Chris' six-week process begins with a rough outline of the area before taking to Facebook and Reddit to ask residents to share their favourite myths, legends, and places that should be included on the map.
"Most maps tend to get 1,000 comments between Facebook and Reddit," he said.
"So I try to include most of what people say.
"Even though these are based on reality, I like to get the mythology of places involved."
He also enjoys taking suggestions from residents about how to bring more modern structures into the fantasy setting, with places like the Riverside and St James' Park displayed as Roman Colosseums and Teesside Airport depicted as a flock of dragons hovering above the region.
Despite the attachment on a personal level to his Teesside map, having lived in Norton until six years ago when he moved to Darlington with his family, Chris said his favourites to draw have been the Isle of Wight and Merseyside.
"The Isle of Wight looks like a treasure map!" he chuckled.
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As for Merseyside, he said: "It was my first proper urban map, but it was nice because there was a lot of local stuff I could put in because of how small things were."
He hopes to move on to making maps of the American states after completing the British Isles, but has already dabbled in North America.
"I was once commissioned to do a map of a really remote part of Canada for a person over there who wanted to gift it to a friend - there were a lot of trees!"
What do you think of these Tolkien-inspired maps? Let us know in the comments.
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