Isle of Yren - vector map

[ChickPea]

I made a little map over the past week. I never got round to starting a WIP thread, cos it seemed like every night when I stopped, I was halfway through some part and wanted to finish it before I posted. But when I did finish the next night, I'd immediately start on a new bit, and on it goes...

I decided recently to fully embrace vector art, instead of using a tablet, mostly cos I'm just not very good at hand-drawing and my lack of skill discourages me. So, I fired up Inkscape and set about making this. I'd intended to move it into Affinity Designer at some point, as I find that software a lot of fun to use, but I couldn't be bothered booting into Windows. Inkscape is great on Linux (better than on Windows, imho - a lot less crashy) and it coped magnificently with this map (seriously, there are over 10k cloned trees!!)

I had a lot of fun with this, and I think (hope!) it didn't turn out too badly for being made entirely in a vector graphics program. There's one very low opacity texture layer (one of Inkscape's filters) just to add a little bit of bump to some of the flat colour areas. I could have started importing parchment-style textures, but I wanted to see where I could get to purely with Inkscape.

My biggest problem with vector is that I've got to reign myself in when it comes to colour choices. There's something about vector makes me want to pick really strong, bold colours., something I'm not as inclined to do when working with Gimp/Krita. I had to force myself to tone it down a couple of times, and settled for a fairly traditional blue/green colour scheme. My NEXT map though....

yren-final.jpg

[Ilanthar]

Always nice to see one of your map !
I love the tree & the subtle way of showing topography under your forests. But I must say the light green is a bit to bold for my taste...

[ChickPea]

Thanks for the comment, Ilanthar!

Have to admit, I'm laughing about your comment on the bold green colour. The colour tones were even stronger before!!

[rdanhenry]

Don't be afraid of color! Let others wallow in the darkness of grungy, shadowy maps. If your soul sings in the brightness, let that be your path!

[Flawed-Menagerie]

I love the way you stylized your mountains and farmlands. Also the colour choice while not common I think tells a story about the sort of culture that might be present on this island. <3 also the wiggly compass rose is so fun.

I've been using designer lately as well something can definitely said for the way they lay that software out I agree its fun and isn't as nearly as costly as adobe.

Did you experiment with or flop over to the pixel persona mode at all for this map or was that something you only did in inkscape? Ah nevermind I misread.

[The Elderly Cartographer]

I used Inkscape for my logo. I liked the user experience, but never imagined it was versatile enough to make a map. lol.

Magnificent job and lovely color tone!

[ChickPea]

Don't be afraid of color! Let others wallow in the darkness of grungy, shadowy maps. If your soul sings in the brightness, let that be your path!

YES! Thanks for your words, Dan!

I love the way you stylized your mountains and farmlands. Also the colour choice while not common I think tells a story about the sort of culture that might be present on this island. <3 also the wiggly compass rose is so fun.

I've been using designer lately as well something can definitely said for the way they lay that software out I agree its fun and isn't as nearly as costly as adobe.

Did you experiment with or flop over to the pixel persona mode at all for this map or was that something you only did in inkscape? Ah nevermind I misread.

Yeah, it was only Inkscape for this map. I do love the pixel persona in Designer, though. For me, it's a great combination of raster & vector and it ticks a lot of boxes. Just one example... in this particular map, I struggled a little with the base of the mountains, where there's a fairly harsh transition between the grey-ish colour of the mountains and the green base shade of the land. I created some blurs just to blend it a little, but it's time consuming and the results aren't as good as I'd like. In Designer, you can just slap down some paint at the base of the mountains & blend it with the smudge tool. It's so easy and quick. And if I need something more complex, I love how you can seamlessly open the file in Photo for the better tools there.

At the risk of sounding like an advert for Affinity, if anyone was thinking about buying Photo or Designer, they just announced their Black Friday sale where you can get 30% off, see here: https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/store/

I used Inkscape for my logo. I liked the user experience, but never imagined it was versatile enough to make a map. lol.

Magnificent job and lovely color tone!

Thank you so much! I'm glad you like it.

[Straf]

Nice work ChickPea, I'm amazed at what you can do in Inkscape. I'm still learning it. Is it just me or is the island shaped like Oor Wullie's boot?

[ChickPea]

Thanks, Straf. Glad you like it.

Haha, maybe my next map should be bucket-shaped...

[Straf]

Haha. Yeah, complete with a dungaree lake and Murdoch hills shaped like a boabie's hat.