Aug/Sep Lite Entry - Well of the Golden Maiden

[Greason Wolfe]

Just a place holder for now, back-story and map soon to come.

GW

[Gandwarf]

Promising name

[Greason Wolfe]

More properly titled, it would be "The Well of Purity and the Gold Maiden" but I wasn't sure if that would all fit, so I shortened it a little.

And today, I finally managed to get to work on things. Took a while before I found what I was looking for, terrain wise, but once I found it, I spent a couple of hours working on the erosion and what not in Wilbur then sent it over to Terragen for a base render. The river(s) is(are) cut a little deep at the moment and there are a few that need to go "dry," but that's okay. I've kind of got it set in my head that I want to hand-draw this map anyhow, so the render shown below is, more or less, a model to work off of as I put what little artistic talent I have to the test. Still working on the back story/set-up for this one, but I've got most of the rough draft done just to add a little flavor.

GW

[Gandwarf]

Looks nice so far, other than the points you already touched yourself.

[Steel General]

Looking good so far GW.

Is this going to be an arctic location, or is that just the base colors of the render coming out of Terragen?

[Jykke]

I assumed that it is the base colors for renders in terragen. The picture really makes me want to do a wintery scene in 3D, but maybe some another time

[Greason Wolfe]

@ SG and Jykke

That's just some base coloring. Rather than trying to crank this out in Terragen, I'm gonna draw it by hand, but needed a good model to work from. Just enough contrast to see shapes and what not, but not so much as to be distracting when I put pencil to paper. All in all, I think the region will be a fairly temperate one with a bit of snow at the highest points depending on which season I settle for. I've been doing so much "digital" work as of late that my drawing skills are starting to slack a bit, and we can't have that!

GW

[Greason Wolfe]

Sort of an update. Went ahead and dropped in some color, but stripped off any sense of texture for the purposes of identifying elevation ranges. It looks very terraced at this point, but that's mostly because I spent a bit of time editing and resizing a few things without bothering to smooth them out for render. Got rid of the nasty river digs for the time being as well, seeing as how I didn't particularly like the placement of some of them. There are still a couple two or three things that need to go away (namely the centralized mountain to the south) and a few things that need to become more pronounced (namely the 3/4 ring of mountains to the north) but I'll handle those when I set pencil to paper. Speaking of which, I need to set up a larger render for while I'm at work tonight and then, or so I hope, a printing session tomorrow so that I can get started with that whole pencil thing.

GW

P.S. There is a reason for the red coloring along some of the shore lines. Some of it will be going away, but much of it has to do with the back story that is still in progress.

### Latest WIP ###

[Greason Wolfe]

So I've had a minor change of heart, mostly because my hands just aren't steady enough to draw like I used to, but also because as I continued to work on this map things started to look not only interesting, but possessed of great potential. To that end, I'll be sticking with Terragen for the renders, and a lot of Wilbur/PSP for the editing.

I've managed to lay out the first rivers (even finding a better way to cut them into the landscape), and re-applied the coloring. I still need to tweak that end of things (namely the sand looking color to the mountains) and there are a couple of tributaries that I'll likely cut. For the most part, however, I wanted to lay in the main river and its tributaries. The next phase, besides tweaking the coloring, will be to lay in the "less important" rivers and streams. One area that is concerning me, however, is the lake that the central river dumps into. As it stands now, there is no visible discharge from that lake. It's a matter I'll have to think about and find a way to solve.

Other than that, I really like where this is going, and I'm having loads of fun working on it. I might even go so far as to say that it has, at least on a short-term basis, supplanted my Hearthstone project, but is giving me ideas about how to better (and more efficiently) proceed with that particular map.

So here's the latest render with the main river(s) in place.

GW

### Latest WIP ###

[Gandwarf]

Looks good... can't wait to see how you are going to connect with the GOLD theme.