A West Marches (still-)Unnamed Map

[Bruno Müller]

Yay, a new project (that I almost forgot to share)!

A friend and I are developing a RPG project on a friends' local boardgame shop. They're excited to bring role-playing games to their public, and we already developed some playing activities on other institutions. This time, we're going to try a West Marches campaign (you can read more about it here). In short, it's an open-world where any players can try to explore things on a semi-uncharted land. The characters are based on a single settlement, and each time there's a game session, they venture somewhere and find what's there.

Our background idea is that the characters are adventurers from a small settlement of a banished people. They were forced by some sort of religious taboo to go live in the wildlands of a so-called cursed and abandoned land, a place where a large and extinct civilization once was. The players/adventurers only have an old map of this part of the continent, and even the labels are so old that no one can read them -- that is, I'm going to develop some sort of fictional writing system, and decoding the labels will be part of the experience, since the map will be permanently displayed on one of our friends' gaming rooms.

I'm super excited to see this done!

A personal challenge in this one is to emulate a style of map I've never tried before: a bird's eye view of an entire region, (ultra)heavily inspired by the Faerûn 3rd Edition Map.

Here are some steps of the process until now, with the first being a drawing I made with my friend on paper.

A-Fenda---Mapa00.jpg A-Fenda---Mapa01.png A-Fenda---Mapa02.png A-Fenda---Mapa03.png

### Latest WIP ###
A-Fenda---Mapa04.png

The hard part for me is to NOT detail it too much, haha.
I'll be posting each advancement on the illustration as soon as I have them.

I hope you guys enjoy it!

[XCali]

Nice work! You are really getting the style right.

And I daresay that your attempt is better to the eye for me than what you are emulating; the other one's mountains and forests all seem like they are under a whitish faded sheen that doesn't look that good to me. So, well done on yours and keep up the good work!

Nitpicking goggles, I would like to see some varying colours in the ocean, even if it is subtle. At the moment, you have a darkish outline around your coast, but that is not realistic(even if this is a fantasy world) Coastlines, have shallow water and then it gets darker as it goes out to sea and only becomes lighter again when there is maybe an underwater mountain or island or mainland.

Good luck,
Omri

[Bruno Müller]

Thanks, XCali! ^^

Although the original is super inspiring to me, I see the same problems that you pointed; the whitish fade make it seems too confusing in some places, to me. It's good to know that I'm sort of improving some things of a map that was important to me as I was growing up!

The land outline on my map was a bit weird, and I couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was. Thanks for pointing the color! I completely forgot about that!

Anyway, here is the current version of it.

### Latest WIP ###
A-Fenda---Mapa06b.png

I'm still not certain with some colors and the ocean texture, but overall I'm quite happy with the progress.

[XCali]

Thanks, XCali! ^^

Although the original is super inspiring to me, I see the same problems that you pointed; the whitish fade make it seems too confusing in some places, to me. It's good to know that I'm sort of improving some things of a map that was important to me as I was growing up!

The land outline on my map was a bit weird, and I couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was. Thanks for pointing the color! I completely forgot about that!

Anyway, here is the current version of it.

### Latest WIP ###


I'm still not certain with some colors and the ocean texture, but overall I'm quite happy with the progress.

Pleasure. We are here to help each other.

What I meant with the darkish outline was the dark Ocean outline around the land, but you did fix it.

Though the ocean does seem somewhat patchy at moment. Maybe look at it.

Anyway, I was thinking about you pondering about some colours and started considering what could work on this map and got to experimenting.
So, if you are interested, here is my experiment:
An Experiment.jpeg
I started out with colours closer to what you have, and tried to see what colours would compliment each other around the coast and in the image is what I came out with.
It was simple, the land layer was top in this case and the shallows layer below it and the ocean depth layer below that. And I used a cloudy brush with low opacity with each colour.

Hope this helps. Good luck with the rest.

[Bruno Müller]

Anyway, I was thinking about you pondering about some colours and started considering what could work on this map and got to experimenting.
So, if you are interested, here is my experiment:
An Experiment.jpeg
I started out with colours closer to what you have, and tried to see what colours would compliment each other around the coast and in the image is what I came out with.
It was simple, the land layer was top in this case and the shallows layer below it and the ocean depth layer below that. And I used a cloudy brush with low opacity with each colour.

Hope this helps. Good luck with the rest.

Wow, XCali, now that's a good feedback! Thanks a lot! <3
I understand what you mean, but I think that the style I'm trying to do is more technical/contemporary, so I'm trying to not put too much realistic details, otherwise I think I'd have to pay way more attention to hills, mountains and swamps, so they would match, if you know what I mean. Even the ocean waters, I didn't initially plan any texture there, so it would be a very plain light blue... I think what I'm aiming at is something that resembles the original Faerûn map, with a pinch of National Geographic, haha.

Anyway, the ocean is really better with texture. And yep, it looks too patchy... I used the Difference Clouds filter to try it out, but I'm going to fix that by actually drawing the ocean bed.

Again, thanks a lot!

[XCali]

Wow, XCali, now that's a good feedback! Thanks a lot! <3
I understand what you mean, but I think that the style I'm trying to do is more technical/contemporary, so I'm trying to not put too much realistic details, otherwise I think I'd have to pay way more attention to hills, mountains and swamps, so they would match, if you know what I mean. Even the ocean waters, I didn't initially plan any texture there, so it would be a very plain light blue... I think what I'm aiming at is something that resembles the original Faerûn map, with a pinch of National Geographic, haha.

Anyway, the ocean is really better with texture. And yep, it looks too patchy... I used the Difference Clouds filter to try it out, but I'm going to fix that by actually drawing the ocean bed.

Again, thanks a lot!

Pleasure!

I hope you got some use out of my feedback. I tried to keep it as simple as possible for your styles purposes. With my Sambria map, I went all in with the ocean because my land was also quite detailed. I do, however, believe the way in the sample will be perfectly fine for what you are trying. Though, I do get what you are saying. It is about keeping the balance. Still, making the ocean slightly more interesting will help the overall map without having to redo the land.

Regardless of your choice, your map is coming along really nicely! My imagination is already doing rounds about it.

[XCali]

Great stuff!!! That worked splendidly! Well done *High five*

[Bruno Müller]

I can't believe it's been six months since I updated this thread! Second half of last year was quite a mess to me, but now I hope I'm coming back on track. Anyway: the West Marches campaign didn't work, so I completely forgot about this map. Just thought about it today and spend the day working on it. Since the project won't happen anytime soon, I didn't invest time developing a new font, so I just used the Dethek alphabet from Forgotten Realms.

A-Fenda---Mapa08.png
### Latest WIP ###

It's almost done by now, I think. Maybe I'll add some minor details and do a few corrections and call it finished!