November 2018 Challenge: Al'Terrino

[ChickPea]

This one has been an experiment and a half! I decided to try a few different things, which is what the challenges are all about, I suppose. I haven't posted a WIP before now, cos I was faffing about so much with the non-mappy bits. I thought I should at least have a map to show before I started a thread.

Overall, I'm viewing it as an advertising poster or promotional flyer for a novel. Something along those lines. There'll be some story text at the bottom. I need to rewrite what I had originally written, cos somewhere along the way I decided it would be mad cool if the girl had glowing balls and sparkly magicky bits around her hands. So now I need to make my story fit. She's supposed to a 'princess in exile' type character metaphorically 'surveying her realm'. It's all dreadfully cliché, but fear not, gentle reader, there are only about three paragraphs of text, not a whole novel.

Originally I had a dark blue land colour, and it looked great against the sea & sky, but I guess there's a reason people don't use very dark land masses very often. My light-coloured lines for the mountains looked too 'glowy' and it didn't fit. If I'd been mapping some sort of ghostly/other worldly realm it would have looked good, but not here. So I redid it in a greeny/blue colour which, in truth, I don't like as much, but I couldn't make it work otherwise. The green blobs will be forests, and obviously they're still to be done. I also need to add more labels for rivers, forests & mountains. It's been made in Affinity Designer, so it's mostly all vector, with some use of the program's 'pixel persona' which lets you draw with raster brushes.

### Latest WIP ###

alterrino1.jpg

[- JO -]

Great start and a very good idea ! As you said, it's a new style, but you seem to already master it !

[MistyBeee]

There is something really poetic and dreamy in the layout and colors, ChickPea

[MapMappingMapped]

Cool start and lovely layout!

[ChickPea]

Thanks so much for the comments, they're appreciated.

I'm posting my final WIP cos I'm not going to have any more time to spend on it. I'd hoped to do some more, but my time has been so limited over the last week, so this is as finished as it's going to be. I'm posting the final version without the story, cos I'm not going to finish it off in time (I've got bits and pieces written, but nothing quiet coherent) so it'll need to do without unfortunately. Just, err, fill in the blanks from your imagination.

### Latest WIP ###

alterrino2.jpg

[ThomasR]

The bookcover feel is here and I love your shading ! Have you considered ading texture to the forests, sea and land ?

EDIT : I realise it's a final version, my bad