Fjord WIP

[Ascension]

I was looking through one of my Viking books tonight and saw a fjord and thought that it might be a challenge. I'm trying out some new techniques in order to get a more painterly look, not fully happy with the water but Ive still got a ways to go on this. No scale yet since this is a test piece to work out the techniques and see if I like 'em and see what others think. I'm thinking of putting in a small village with a few docks (these are Vikings with longboats after all) but the size and detail level won't be set until I come up with a scale. My initial thought for scale when I started this was 1 pixel = 10 feet.

[Badger]

1 px = 10' ??? Great googlymoogly ...

[Ascension]

Update on my fjord. Totally redid the water, added some textures. Think the water still needs some work and maybe the trees could be more defined but I dunno. Changed the scale to 1 px = 2 feet so that my trees would be 40 feet (20 pixels) wide. Thinking about putting some type of castle on the cliff and maybe a cave entrance and quarry. The town will sit on the east side of the fjord and I ready to start crackin on that.

ps. the tree are made out of a picture of parsely

[Badger]

The water looks good, but I agree, you might play around with it some more, but you are definitely on the right track...

The left side hill looks as if it fades 'over' the trees... I'm somewhat colorblind and this might be one of those little tricks of the eye for me personally. I personally like my trees to be defined more or less. The faded look always appears as if someone used an eraser on a map... this of course is just a personal preference ...

If this is a true fjord, as in very steep cliffs along the bank of the inlet, It needs some more definition, as it just looks like a small brownish coastline ... perahps a harder bevel...

Looking forward to seeing this come to full bloom

[industrygothica]

By no means am I a master mapper, so take my opinion for what it is...

It looks like the trees are trying to climb up the sides of the cliff, which is good, but might could use a bit more detail. I wonder what it'd look like if you got rid of the ground level and expanded the water (and maybe the cliffs on the right side) so that the cliffs overlooked the water directly. I think the shadow that it casts on the water might have an interesting effect.

Look at this image to see what I mean:

[Ascension]

Here's the 2 pics I started with. The first is from a book called "Cultural Atlas of the Viking World" (bought it at Borders about 5 years ago) and shows the large fjord called Sogne fjord. I had always assumed that fjords looked like the one in the previous post until I saw this one. So I went to Flash Earth and sure enough there is plenty of green, which I assume to be either trees or land. The main problem is making the land look like it slopes upwards instead of looking so flat. I tried the normal shading stuff but it comes out dark and since most people think my maps are too dark (I think they're too light) well that just leaves me stuck. Also is a screen grab of the finished river banks, re-tinting the river, adjustments to trees to eliminate the fading, added some shrubbery, and my preliminary contouring.

[Steel General]

How about a wizards tower? Or maybe some ancient monolith, ruins, etc.?