A Random Island

[moutarde]

This is completely unrelated to my current WIP. I was bored and tired of naming places so I decided to have some fun and throw together a quick little island, satellite style. This is my first map in this style, and I only spent about an hour or so it, so be gentle! But don't hold back either, I'm sure there's plenty of ways to improve this thing.

[Ascension]

Looks like the Pasis style. The blue for that is always very bright to my eyes and kind of unnatural looking. You might want to darken it with some darker blue, gray, or teal. The only major thing that I see, though, is that the trees often cover up the mtns.

[torstan]

Good work - certainly a great start.

I agree about the trees - they're more likely to cluster into copses and sections fo continuous forest than be evenly spread like that. Also, they tend to grow close together on flat ground and sparse on steeper areas - so you can use them to define your terrain.

[Najmir]

mou,

I agree with Ascension on the blue it is a little eerie. I like the water texture. Is that done with PS? Would there be any similar textures achievable with GIMP. I need to work on my water in rapids. Anyways back to your map.

Otherwise just a few other minor observations.

I am not sure if you intended to have mountains or jsut a rocky plain there does not seem to be much depth. The gound textures again are good.

Lastly it looks like you have a continuous beach around your island. Considering that the water appears to be fairly rough I would have expected some rocky or weather torn head lands and the beaches in the bays/bites.

And maybe also some Cows. Every good map needs some cows.

Regards
Naj

[moutarde]

Ascension and Torstan: thanks for the advice about the trees, I actually deliberately used them to cover the mountains because I wasn't really happy with them But I also forgot to render some lighting effects in there, so maybe that would have helped them look a little better The water should be easy enough to tone down.

I'm not familiar with Pasis's style, but I've heard it mentioned a lot. One of my goals in doing this island was to throw something together without following a tutorial and to try some of the techniques that people have discussed here recently, like doing the trees with a high scatter brush and bevelling across multiple layers. The mountains were also just multiple layers with some bevelling. The whole thing is really just layer styles. And no clouds. Still havn't gotten the hang of clouds. Every time I try to use them it all comes out wrong

Najmir, all the textures I used were rendered with a free program called Genetica Viewer. The water is actually three different textures with varying types of blending and opacity. The beach was actually done with a rocky texture, but it came out looking rather beachy so I just left it I'll see if I get a cow on that island. Maybe a lone demon cow. Demon cows are evil. That would explain why there was only one on the island.

[Najmir]

mou,

Thanks for the link posted. That may come in very handy.

lol. The reference to cow's was from my 3yr old son who asked if I was going to draw some cows on my Shadowcrest wip when I had told him i was drawing the farms.

Maybe I need to work on a cow texture or even signature for my maps. hmmm