Looking for a large map at A1 size , scale: (1 inch = 16 miles)

[- Winter -]

I have tried making maps of my D&D region for years (using resources here!) but I've never felt overly happy with the results. I figure I'll find a pro to help me along. I have two reference maps and some reference lore. I don't know how much these things cost, so I'd be quite happy to discuss rates. I have no particular deadline.

I'd like for it to be printable to A1 size (or expandable to 24 x 36", though the sea can be used for this expandability. I am happy to look at different artistic styles but I'm leaning towards something like this http://mistybeee.com/img/portfolio/map06.jpg (and I've already spoken to Misty Bee!)

I would like access to the final .psd file, without the layers merged together.

Please email me winter.941994@gmail.com to discuss prices and any more details Some of the geography of the world has informed the history of the world, and is quite important as a result

Maps I've made myself
https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...12517280_n.png
https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...82/unknown.png


Reference lore:
https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...47/unknown.png
https://media.discordapp.net/attachm...94/unknown.png

[Kellerica]

While I'd be happy to help you out with your map, I (and if I were bold I would assume other artists as well) will have to frown upon the idea of sharing the work copies of my maps.

I'd be opening my work up to all kinds of potential copyright misuse. What's to stop the commissioner from slightly altering the map, removing our signature and selling the work as their own, or something like that. Of course a person skilled with Photoshop could do that with just a Jpeg as well, but at least that way I'm not making it all too easy. And on a more personal note, I'd also essentially be giving away a lot of my "trade secrets" on how I do the things I do with my illustrations, many of which are tecniques I've spent years coming up with. And one more addtional thing to consider is assets - I use a lot of textures, fonts and other tools when creating my maps that I have purchased the licenses for, but the person receiving my psd would not.

So unfortunately I don't think I'd be able to share the work file. I would still love to help you out with your map if this is not essential you (and I'd be more than happy to edit the map later on for you as well if needed). You can find some of my work on my website, which also has a handy contact form you can reach me with, should you want to chat things further.

[- Winter -]

Hey, thank you for saying so. The reason for wanting that is that I might want to modify little bits in the future but I hadn't considered the things you've pointed out about it uncovering your techniques. You're right about a signature being easily removable from a .jpeg and it makes me curious as to what protections exist for artists in that sense, in a world with content-aware, other than just a legal agreement to not do the things you're rightly worried about.. I feel like asking that question makes me sound like a bit of an ass though. I hope that comes across as genuine curiosity and not some weird "aha! well what about.." thing.

I'm wondering if there's some middle ground in terms of layers where, say, large chunks of the .psd are merged together but give me the delineation I want though I am struggling to place exactly what delineation I want exactly, I just feel a bit uncomfortable not having the ability to edit the file if that makes sense.

My understanding of the copyright stuff is that, effectively, I'd be asking to purchase the copyrights as well as your design time. I understand that, by default, the artist has the rights unless specifically purchased by the client and that's why I was putting that up front rather than the story I seem to see a lot of online where an artist delivers on work and the client starts asking for the .psd files only after-the-fact (and which I understand they have no right to, unless agreed in advance).

[Redrobes]

It is generally the case that if you wanted to split the map in layers then you might want a background as a layer with almost all of the map art on it. Then maybe you might want a top layer which are the roads and towns - the stuff that people and creatures might change or develop. You may want a third layer for just grid or hex maybe. But generally most of the map is contained within the background. But you could then add an extra town or change a road etc as your campaign progresses. Buying the copyright can be done but it might make the price a lot more expensive as your effectively buying any derivatives of the map too. That might prevent the artist from using any standard brushes that they have built up etc so it might be more effort too and it prevents the artist from showing it. You have to specify what you want or need and be prepared for the price differences as a result of that. Its always worth asking and discovering where the cost is being built up from.

Also, since your requesting A1 which is quite large it might be useful to know what kind of resolution in dots per inch your wanting on that too. If that would be the usual 300 then that would be quite a large map file.

[Tiana]

Your map looks fine, and considering you want control to edit it in the future, I think you should have some faith in your own skills. To make it look more like the map you linked you'll just need to tint the mountains layer with something other than black. So a layer mask over that layer set to screen or overlay, and then a layer over everything with a parchment paper set to overlay. Like we can give you some advice here for you to get what you've made the rest of the way. You're more than halfway there. This map is better than 99% of client sketches I've ever seen.

If you're positive you want to commission art, I mean yeah, some of us would help.

I don't do commissions where I provide the full layers. For 1, it's impossible, there is not a single Photoshop file that would make any sense. I use multiple programs and you would need all of those programs with assets set up in the correct folders, some of which are purchased stock items that you don't have the licence to use but I do. I would have to make a map very specifically special for you to make it editable for you in a way that made sense for you. Unlike Kell I'm not worried about my 'technique being stolen', I am more than happy to explain how I got to any results here on the forum for the world to know. It's just impossible for me to legally provide a means to manipulate my work in a meaningful fashion when I've spent decades building up a bank of paid stock art and the license is for me. No one wants to dump an additional $50 on stock art packs to be allowed to own the layers, and my layers tend to be made up of like a sandwich of 50 different textures with work from dozens of sources from multiple stock art sources so it would be an enormous pain. That's why I will only provide text and city point of interest icons as an editable or png option, everything else gets merged.

Certainly I can plan for text to be editable, and I can also make all city/location markers editable, but all the rest of it gets merged. I also do future edits to text and points of interest that need adding or removing due to in world events, for modest fees lower than the creation of a new map.

But yeah, there are several people in this business who have made the agreement you want only to find their work slightly changed being sold or presented as someone else's portfolio piece. So, while you feel uncomfortable having fixed art, we have discomfort not knowing what's happening to our art. Even without giving layers our art gets stolen. Most of us have dealt with it and will continue to throughout our careers as a consequence of having our art on the internet.

If you want to be able to edit your art... and you feel uncomfortable not being able to edit your art... I really think you should keep pushing your own creation forward. You've gotten so close to finishing it.

You just need to add lakes (your rivers look fine), location points of interest, text, a fancy frame, a ribbon or cartouche, a compass, and most importantly, some texture sandwiching. For the borders of the countries, draw them with an airbrush or marker, or do vector lines if you want them to look flawless, or set the blend mode to overlay.

Switch out the mountains you scaled up for mountains that are already that large, or make a new mountain by stacking a few and erasing the right places if none of the pieces in the brush set are large enough by default to fix the pixelation on it.

When you do the text, give it an outline stroke in the color of the base canvas.

And that'll do it. Honestly I feel very confident you can finish this map and maintain editability to your standards with what I see here. The river looks really good and so does the shoreline. If you don't want to make your own compass, frame or ribbons all of those can be found in the assets section here or on other stock art sites too. Here's a free ribbon you could use. https://pixabay.com/vectors/banner-r...anner-3284786/

And I made this free compass for a challenge you could use if you wanted.

Hunter's Wish Tiffany Munro feedthemultiverse slice8.pngHunter's Wish Tiffany Munro feedthemultiverse slice11.png

And you can do a basic frame by doing the same echo-stroke you did for the shoreline, except around the edge of the frame. Make a blank layer, select all, shrink the selection and do a stroke on that. Do that a few times and get creative with the fill and clipping things to the fill.

That's really all it'll take to finish it. The only thing that looks off to me is the pixelated mountain and the way you did the country borders. Like the coast and the effect in the water around it looks great, the fill isn't too cluttered so it's easy to read, and your river has good energy. You should make a WIP thread and ask any questions and we'll get you through it that way!

[- Winter -]

I have been told in the past that 150dpi is the minimum, else text will start to suffer and maybe even at 150. That being said, I am happy to add in text myself and I won't need help with that which also removes licensing issues.

Having thought about it some more, I would like some room for edits for things like vegetation and rivers in the longer term, and potentially also for terrain if I decide an important hill is here, or a lake over there.

I will have a think about what you've said, Tiana. My biggest frustration has been that, as I've drawn finer details, I have a Wacom One tablet (not the display version) and I can't seem to translate angles onto the screen as I want them, and all my mountains end up with a weird upwards flick (hence my use of a brush tool which just stamped them all in, which I resorted to after many hours of going 'nah, I don't like that' to my freehand work). I also just don't know how to convey "this area is a wetlands" in a way that I also find aesthetically pleasing - see my current hodgepodge of a wetlands which I made by rendering some clouds and difference clouds and then ramming a Levels adjustment layer up to make it a bunch of random squiggles.

My thinking with paying someone was that whilst I believe I could learn to do this better, and I already know my way around Photoshop reasonably well enough to get somewhere eventually.. I value my time. Just as I value the time and amazing work of the artists here who will be happy for me to pay them (I hope!) to do it better than I would do. If I charge myself the same rate I do in my own creative commissions, it's more expensive for me to make my own map (though it's offset, of course, by also being """paid""" for that time by myself - and developing a skill).

Thank you for everybody who has commented or messaged me. At the moment I am still happy to look at portfolios and consider work, but... Yeah, you amazing people have given me bits to chew on (and I'm now eyeing up the Wacom One Display tablet... My partner shall be thrilled).

[Kellerica]

As someone who moved from an ancient Wacom Bamboo to a Cintiq, I can confirm that it makes all the difference in the world. I had the same issue with the non-display tablets, I seemed to have a handful of weird "dead" angles that my hand just refused to draw right on the tablet, and I'd end up drawing the same line 12 before eventually getting it right. I know a lot of people who are extremely skilled at using those kinds of tablets, but for me it always kind of felt like I needed to re-learn how to draw completely, and I never had the patience for that. The Cintiq changed all that.

There are some good and cheaper alternatives to Wacom products though. My partner uses an XP-Pen and from his comments and trying it myself, it seems like an excellent tablet. Here's a list of some alternatives, if you're interested: https://www.brad.site/reviews/wacom-...ernatives.html

[Tiana]

I usually do the 'cluster of three lines' and 'cluster of 7 lines' to make little grass clumps for wetlands!

I will note you can always draw patches over top of a map even if you don't have the layers. In fact, even with the layers, patching in a river instead of editing the old rivers is often an easier way to go about it. That said, for rivers I'd be willing to provide the layer as an independent png. And I provide future edits when requested for low fees, most of us do, even if I really wish some of my clients who come back for edits would just let me redo all of the work LOL

And yeah, the Cintiq / screen tablet does make all the difference. I hate to say it but my work exponentially improved once I got a larger screen tablet. Though I do miss having a small tablet for using as a replacement mouse. If you do artwork commissions you'll probably love to have one, heh. But do consider low cost alternatives, I have heard they've come a long way. I do see how you could be conflicted if your career keeps you pretty busy and makes you decent money; that is a good recipe to commission an artist instead.