My world - The Everlandias

[LonewandererD]

Hey guys, i'm going to completely redo my world, which isn't a real bug issue as i have barely started mapping my world in the first place.

Anyway, instead of posting my three continent seperately i'm going to do my world, the Everlandias, all in one thread. At the moment i'm working on a colourscheme for my western continent of Adallia. I've been screwing around in photoshop and experimenting with Ascensions tutorials, great tutorials by the way, and have come up with this Practice Map.

Its a good start but it still needs work. Firstly, I want to know if anyone has a good way of colouring areas to look like marshland, my attempts haven't been working for me, too plain. Secondly, does anyway have a suggestion as how to make the open green area in the bottom right look like sweeping grasslands? At the moment they look a bit dull. Thirdly, should i make the forested areas darker? They need to look dense yet lively and luscious, for want of a better word, as Adallia is a very rainy place.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

-D-

[Steel General]

Looking pretty good so far, the green is a little over-saturated for my taste, but that's just me

You might want to check out the Genetica Viewer from Spiral Graphics, it comes with aa whole bunch of different textures that you can manipulate to some degree. There are a lot of nice textures included with it.

I use them all of the time. One in particular ('Just Add Bison') may work for you.

[Ascension]

For marshland I've been messing around with some new techniques...try them and see what you think...I did these on my Jasmine Coast map in the top right corner (this is just grayish because it's supposed to be haunted as opposed to marshy). Grab a big airbrush (I use the airbrush soft round 300 or 100), set the flow low, around 10-20% and paint in some black on a new layer above the land. Set this layer to Hue...this will turn everything that is underneath of the painted area to become a grayscale. If you then reduce the opacity and let some color just barely peek through then you can get some nice effects. Lastly, I'll duplicate this layer, pop the opacity all the way back up, set the fill to zero and the mode to normal and add a layer style of color overlay (something brown or tan) with a low opacity just to give it some color variation and possibly a pattern overlay of clouds or something to give it some light/dark variation.

[LonewandererD]

Kay, here we go.

I've been messing around with making marshlands, i sort of like mine because it looks wet but seems to be lively, which is what i'm aiming for with the marshes of Adallia. I like it but something seems off, maybe i should make the green brighter, it looks a bit too cool right now.

I darkened the forest because, as Steel General said, the other green was too over-saturated. I'm really liking that forest texture, thanks again Ascension.

And finally i made the areas to the bottom right brighter to represent open grasslands. Its fine but it still feels like it needs something. While fooling around with the grass i found a good colour that i'm going to use for my desert regions on one of my other continents so its not all bad.

I'm still trying to draw up my main map for Adallia, pics to0 come soon.

Any help would be appreciated.

-D-

[LonewandererD]

A few more updates to the practice map.

I've changed the marsh area to be darker and blended it in better with the treeline, the bluish-green wasn't working for me. Also i change the white around the lettering from a white stroke to a white outer glow so that it still makes the lettering legible while not overpowering it.

-D-

[Karro]

Hmm. I think I prefer the previous marshes, just because it looks like marshes (i.e everglades-style) to me, with lots of grass and spots of water showing through. The new style is just kind of a grayish blur, and seems pretty indistinct. Anyway, good implementation of Ascension's style, overall.

[Steel General]

Neat land shapes!

Looks like you still have some tiny gaps you may have overlooked.

[LonewandererD]

Nah, it looks that way because its zoomed out to about 55% of it really is, the lines are there, they're just very small.

I zoomed in really close and drew over all gaps with the pencil tool, occasionally checking it with the magic brush to find and fill all gaps.

-D-

[LonewandererD]

Hey guys, hows it going

I've made a slight altercation to the map, I've made a split in the landmass in the northeastern area of the map. This was to break up the total land mass and allow for more naval interaction. Also the new straight that was created serves a role in the history of Adallia.

With that done i split Adallia into four realms for colouring. I've coloured the first realm and put in the basic idea of borders and names but i'm going to wait until after the whole thing is complete before i make final decisions about my countries and add any labels.

So, waht do you think so far?

-D-

[Gandwarf]

That's looking very nice! The layout of the land is very interesting and I love the style you picked.

You do seem to have some river issues though. I see rivers splitting, which they normally don't do. Water tends to take the way of the least resistance. So if you are shooting for a realistic map, the rivers are a problem. It's your map of course, so you can do anything you want

Are the small dots in the ocean islands?