The Known World

[Diamond]

I'm starting a new project here - the first time since I was a teenager doodling on scratch paper that I've undertaken something so ambitious - mapping out what's going to amount to nearly an entire hemisphere.

This is the landmass layout; the scale is roughly 1 pixel equals 2 miles. Obviously, the map won't be accurate to scale - it's meant to be more artsy and stylized than strictly accurate. Since the map will end up being 10,000 by 10,000 miles in dimension, the northern and southern latitudes will be completely out of whack.

What I'm going to do is complete the whole rough layout on this 5Kx5K pixel map: rivers, forests, mountains. Then I'm going to split it up into 25 separate 1000x1000 sections and fill in the detail work for each. Then I'll merge everything back together and add the final overlay stuff. Hopefully this'll take some of the strain off my computer.

Anyway, here's the first step:

[Ascension]

Have fun with all of that, looks like a lot of work. Fun work but still time consuming.

[Diamond]

Update. I had to shrink it to 70%, but I think you can still make out enough detail. All mountains and rivers are done.

[ravells]

Nice colour choices and looking grand so far. How are you going to deal with the mountains on the zoomed in versions? Will you draw them again?

Loving it so far.

[Diamond]

The first image, the 5K x 5K one, is the actual 'zoomed' size. I just couldn't post that full size for the subsequent images, so I'm posting them shrunk by 30% until everything's done, then I'll mesh everything up again into one image (hopefully...). I was thinking too that I don't need to do 25 map sections; I only need to do four - each one 2500 x 2500. That shouldn't strain my PC unduly.

[Ascension]

If you're doing this in an antique style with lots of labels then each new text creates a new layer and layers hog system memory. I would suggest merging some layers to reduce that hogging...like put all of the river text on one layer, mountain text on one layer, etc. If you're not going to have insane amounts of labels then it should be just fine. 2500 should also be good and far less taxing to both you and your pc.

[Diamond]

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm planning for with the text; layer overload is a part of what made my PS crash last time...

But here's an update - forests and deserts added in.

[moutarde]

Looking nice so far. I think the coastline shadows look a little 'textury' though, if that makes sense. So far everything looks hand-drawn, whereas the coastline shadows look photoshopped. Of course, I don't have anything better to suggest, I'm still struggling to get a coast shadow that I like for my own map

[whoiscraig]

Looks great, I love your style.

[Steel General]

I really like the overall color scheme. Though it does seem the forests are lacking something - maybe a texture of some sort *shrugs*