Bit off a bit more than I could chew

[aami]

So, I wanted to make a region map. Made quick sketch or whatnot in Inkarnate. Good for that kinda stuff, actually

Sea of Gull.jpg

then I moved onto Krita, with edge stroke + edge glow fx and transparency masks. Actually been trying out a new method that involves first getting the main river basins down, then making the mountains more detailed around it.

draft3_1.png
(not too good, but it worked as a beginning thing)

then I tried to make some more detailed mountains. My first attempt at making a top-down style, too, since my usual style was your normal perspective mountain thing, but I was noticing that it looked weird with the normal top-down satellite style map, so I wanted to make something more top-down.

draft5_1.png

This then led to my friend saying "too wiggly". So I tried making the lines thinner and lighter.

Screenshot 2022-08-19 031708.png

Then my friend said it looked like rivers. So I added shading.

Screenshot 2022-08-19 031802.png

Then my friend said to make the lines more jagged and less curvy, like rivers. And also change the thickness.
sigh. Also, I accidentally submitted this post early, so I had to edit it, but I have less than 5 posts, so it took like a day lol. Though I am a bit annoyed, I'm more annoyed at the situation, I bet the admins are all neat. I get it, spammers suck, lol.

I'm now trying to follow this one guy's tips. In total, this whole fiasco has cost me around ~8 hrs I'm not getting back. I really need a better workflow.

Will update in this thread. Also sorry if this diverges from normal posts, I'm new here

[Diamond]

I think your friend is on to something telling you to make the mountain elevations more sharp and jagged because yeah, if nothing else it will help differentiate them from the rivers. One thing you could do to is add even MORE lines, even finer even smaller, branching out from the 'secondary' lines, to represent valleys (like example 3 in the link you posted). Right now your ranges are so crinkly that its hard to get a read on how the valleys actually work because there aren't enough branch lines to show what's happening. But the layout is good! Keep on working! (And welcome to the Guild. Yes, spammers are an ongoing issue, but we mods try to approve posts as quickly as we can.)

[waldronate]

The initial run of your mountains is not bad, but (as Diamond has already pointed out), you don't have enough detail. In the tutorial you linked, notice how his shading is varied to show how the light is hitting the mountains. This variation in shading is what sells it (and as Diamond pointed out, putting more and finer strokes on there will make it look better precisely because they will give the impression of detail). One really quick thing to try is to switch the colors on the mountain ridgeline and rivers to get the rivers darker than the mountain ridgeline. If you're going for a purely pen-and-ink style, that might be helpful. If you're willing to make the mountain ridgeline lighter than the background, that might also help sell it as higher, but that's not normally an effect you can do with pen and ink.

Quick exercise: Think of a mountain range. Now think of a river. Most likely, the mountain that you thought of was all jaggedy angles and the river was smooth curves. While there are lots of rolling hills in the world, not too many rounded terrain areas get to be called mountains. Rivers wander back and forth in their courses as they wear away at the world unless they are heading down the jaggedy mountains, so they tend to swirl and curve. If you take those mountain strokes and draw through about every third swirl with a line (ideally on a different layer to get the comparison), I expect that you'll be much more pleased with the results. I would also say that the centerline of the mountains should be a lighter weight stroke so that it's easily distinguishable from the rivers, but that may be much less important if you reduce the swirls. The color change I mentioned earlier might also help.

And if you only spent eight hours on this learning opportunity (including new tooling and techniques), then you're far ahead of where I was way back when. Or maybe even where I am now...

[aami]

waldronate, Diamond, thanks for the advice! I did some more experimentation with the mountains.

1. Like you said, waldronate, I traced over the mountains with one line every three 'squiggles' or so.
mountain_steps_1.png

2. I then made a satellite ridge at every corner, alternating from side to side as to not make any one corner too crowded.
mountain_steps_2.png

3. At each of those corners along with the main ridge corners, I made a little detail run line like Diamond suggested
mountain_steps_3.png

4. I then put detail lines between the lines I already drew (Also it looks like I kinda slacked on the detail lines to the top-right of the mountain range, so look to the bottom-left for what I'm mainly looking for)
mountain_steps_4.png

5. Then I did some basic shading
mountain_steps_5.png

Is this better? Or should the lines be more wiggle-waggly, like the below?
mountain_sample_1.png

[Greason Wolfe]

You might also take a look at Josh Stolarz tutorials. He has an excellent top down mountain tutorial.

[Diamond]

Your step 5 pic looks worlds better. See? Practice GOOD.

[waldronate]

Cartography is the art of abstraction, for the most part, and which parts should go on the map ultimately come back to the purpose of the map. The amount of wiggles is a stylistic question more than anything. A quick and sketchy style will have straighter segments, while the final one you showed is a good compromise between the overly-stylized swirly one and the straight one, I think.