Dawngaarde - Large-ish Map Project

[Korthan]

So I stumbled upon this amazing place via twitter funny enough and as I'm working on a map for a Fantasy world for a potential D&D campaign and or story I'm working on I figured I'd get some input, suggestions, and help with making it the best possible. The basis was to have a massive mainland of sorts with different environments that blend together and make sense to have in the first place. One of the challenges I'm having is how to bring some color into it, so for now it's simply black and white which makes it a bit busy to look out when zoomed out.

So here is the first piece of Dawngaarde. Eventually I plan on adding more continents or chains of islands to it as the story and world expands.

Fantasy Map 001.jpg

[Korthan]

Just a had a thought. If anyone has any cool ideas or techniques for coloring / shading in maps I'm all ears and willing to check it out. I'm looking to spruce up the map a bit instead of leaving it just black and white

[ChickPea]

You're off to a very nice start with this one, though I think a little colouring will help tremendously. What software are you using and do you have a tablet to draw or are you using a mouse?

One quick & dirty trick would be to add a parchment texture and set it perhaps to multiply or overlay, and probably lower the opacity. That'll give you instant texture. Even if you're using a mouse, it's not too hard to introduce colour, especially in the larger, open areas. Pick a grungy brush on low-ish opacity and set your foreground/background colours to green-ish tones (or whatever you want). Either keep swapping between foreground & background, or set the colour dynamics brush effect. Paint lightly in the open areas and you should get a nice grungy effect that will add touches of colour that should (hopefully!) blend into the background. You can build up variations in the colour tones if you keep the opacity relatively low.

Max has some nice tips in this thread, if you don't mind browsing through a long-ish thread (you can just look at the pictures!)

[Korthan]

Hey!

I'm currently doing everything digitally in Photoshop CC with good ol' mouse and keyboard right now. Thanks for the tip on coloring and linking that thread. I'm working on some different styles; suppose you can call it that anyways lol.

More updates to come