Commercial World Map WIP - for Blackstar Games

[torstan]

So I was asked to do a map of a world for Blackstar Games and they were up for letting me post a little preview of the world map in progress. Here's the result so far:

SaemyyrWebPreview.jpg

The plan was to s a Dragon Age-esque map in a hand drawn satellite style. That turned out to be a little tricky!

It's a new style - especially the mountains - and that took a little time pinning down. Here's a little walkthrough of the way I went about building up the map. Each step is a new layer, so there's a good chunk of experimentation in there. Most of the layers are overlay layers, with a hard light for the bright mountain highlights.

MountainsWalkthrough.gif

The next step is all the decoration - labels, scales, borders and so on. I'll post the final once it's approved and done.

This is a commission so it's rights reserved. There's a few more details on the blog.

[Kelron]

Looking great so far. Obviously they made a good choice in hiring you.

[arsheesh]

Fantastic! I really like this new style T, and thanks for sharing the little walk through of how you did it.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Ascension]

Looks great so far, man.

[Mateus090985]

I must add my vote to the "fantastic"!

[Djekspek]

That looks very good man! Some time ago, I also tried to emulate the Thedas map, the mountain work of that map is just amazing... If you look at a high-res version of the Thedas map, you can see that a lot of texture was used (including some existing DEM I assume) and that it seems to be all about painting at a huge canvas (about 6x bigger then teh final map) to create this kind of effect. cheers, DJ

[Ascension]

When you look at that Thedas map that big, isn't so impressive is it? Anyone of of us could do that. I think many have gone way beyond Thedas. I'd like to see a really large version of Albion and see how it measures up.

[eViLe_eAgLe]

Albion <3. But yes, I kind of noticed that when I zoomed in. I certainly couldn't do that, but you guys could.

[ravells]

Torstan that is simply stunning work. Those mountains are just glorious. As I said before (and will no doubt continue to say in the future) I just love the way you push yourself to new heights rather than repeat the same style over and over again.

[Eilathen]

Wow, this is fantastic! I really really dig that style and the map (shapes of the landmass). Well done! Have some rep. .

Too bad i have no interest in d20 and its derivatives. I have to check out the fluff vs. crunch ratio of the book, if possible. Maybe it's worth buying just for the world info.

Anyway, great job.