Minty's World - First Map

[Minty]

Hi all

I said in my intro post that I am a man of little artistic talent, but that I'm looking into mapping to help me visualise my fantasy world for the novel I am working on. In slow dribs and drabs (most likely) I'll update my progress on that here...

Working solely in Photoshop, I started out by checking out some of the excellent tutorials here but then decided rather than try to make some of these different styles that look awesome, I should just concentrate on what it is I'm actually after myself. So, that basically means a predominantly black and white map, making it easy for me to update as and when with new features, cities, text etc. My world did in fact start out from a tutorial though, namely "Photoshop mapping with Chuck" which I stopped at about the halfway point after making the afore-mentioned decision. I went back though to the earlier stages as I quite liked the landmasses I'd ended up with.

The main continent I traced around with the path and pen tools, making a few little changes here and there, and then the islands I decided to select using the magic wand tool and converting to a path, as this would be a lot easier on reflaction, and certainly create better results on some of the smaller islands. As you can see, so far I've not got any other features in place, but I'm hoping to get some mountains and rivers in today if I can get the mountains to work how I want them to look. In the meantime, a work in progress update - and particularly as a first piece from a novice, I welcome any comments and criticism etc throughout the stages of my mapping

(Note, I scaled this to 50% for the attachment, not sure what size I'll keep the map whilst I'm working on it, but it is of course easier to scale down than up!)

wip1-50pc.png

Cheers,

M

[Ascension]

Looks like a good start.

[Minty]

Took some time to get something that I liked as far as mountains go, and I've just been trying not to overdo it while at the same time making sure there are enough of them. I think it's quite difficult to get that happy medium, and maybe it's partly as a result of that that my fantasy world is quite flat. I've kind of been basing my thoughts on the map of Midkemia in the front of Raymond E Feists books, and I made some brushes for mountains of a similar design from a single stock image I found on a public domain image search and then broke up and made to just an outline. I printed out a copy of the map and started to get some of the locations pencilled in (literally) so although I've not yet started on my rivers, forests etc, I thought I'd put some towns and cities in to see how it was starting to shape up...

wip2a.png

M

[Elothan]

Ah, Feist.. The writer that more of less got me started reading fantasy (and thus got me started RPGing, mapmaking, and everything good)
And agrreed I like the landmass shape you have here, just remember that towns, cities, etc, mostly springs up around natural features (like rivers, fertile land, etc) So keep that in mind if you plan to add rivers after locations


I really like the mountain brush there, any chance of sharing it ? :p

[Minty]

Me too as far as Feist goes (well, he's the one who properly started it, after Simon R Green's Blue Moon Rising in the first instance). If I can figure out how to do it, I'd gladly share the brushes (3 seperate ones in total, and I edited slightly some of the instances once they were in place here).

The rivers etc are mostly planned on paper, so the towns aren't as random as they may appear at the moment. Hoping to get the rivers in this weekend, since I may not get much time to work on things before then.

Cheers,

M

[Elothan]

Not sure myself, but I´d love to get them via e-mail "stalesen(at)gmail.com
Probably someone else have more experience with that :p

[Korash]

Minty, I am almost positive that you have a folder somewhere in the Photoshop folder called Brushes. I am not a Photoshop user so I might be wrong, but I don't think so. In that folder you should be able to find the brushes you used and then zip them in a file and send them over here. In Gimp the files have the same name as the brushes themselves. That should help I think.

[Minty]

I had to google how to save these, so if someone could roadtest them and let me know if I did it right, that'd be appreciated:
mintymountains.zip

Cheers,

M

[Minty]

There are some rivers in now. Like the mountains, I'm trying not to over do these, largely because to all intents and purposes the map is to help me visualise when writing, rather than to look amazing. The various towns cities, and some dukedoms etc are also now labelled. Next is to figure out some forestry that looks good I guess...

wip3.png

Cheers,

M

[Korash]

I just run the brushes and the seem to work fine. here is the test sheet with the hose running down the left. Done in Gimp.

[/threadjack]

Edit: here is some rep to go along with the brushes

Edit2: removed the test sheet. Wrong brushes