Madandy

My first blog is about styling. It can be time consumming finding fonts and photoshop brushes, colours and styles in map making. But the effort is truely worth the while even if it means rehashing existing maps. I use some fonts which don't have the full character set so that numbers, for example, don't come out in text. What a pain! And being a poor artist I can't afford to buy pro fonts. I have tried to make my own font up and it took ages! And when you use it it is damn hard to read as the spacing hasn't been sorted out too well. Fontographer, my early version, was a little buggy!

If anyone knows of a particular good old medieval style of written text similar to uncial, hobbiton brushhand, unzial etc etc give me a poke (I'll be eternally grateful!)

It also looks like the more you work on a map the better it becomes BUT don't over work it. Give it a rest and let it lie around for a while before going back to have a look. You'll then get a fresh look at it and anything that needs a tweak can then be tackled objectively. I've just noticed on my ERIA maps that the gems in the top and bottom corners look a little big and distracting and as mentioned before the coast line needs lifting by lighter blur line.....but that can wait. Being an artist involves looking 90% of the time and doing only 10% of the time! Give it a go and you'll find that the time will be well spent!