April Challenge Entry - Brewmasters map

[Djekspek]

heya, have to enter again (obsessive? me?)... Just hope I have the time to finish it but I wanted to practise the style I tried first for the Kailon Empire map and the challenge provides the opportunity I'm trying to create a map that looks kinda realistic but has a 'surreal handmade feel' to it. I'll try to do this by using oversaturation and adding strange and out-of-scale geological features. I try to add content in a way that makes it 'interesting' to travel (e.g. huge desert with a nile-like river running through it that can be sailed up-stream).

I created a landmass, created the basis coloring to try get some kind of balance (not there yet). The landmass is slightly in perspective trying to give it a little feel of depth. Also took some mountain bumpmaps from the Kailon map, slapped them on and started to modify them and adding some other features. The border will be a hop-vine-metallic pattern (once/if I find out how to draw stylized hop vines ... Results until now attached. cheers!

### Latest WIP ###

[Ghostman]

Very pretty - not that it could look any other way with this style

On the southern end of the big continent there's two parallel mountain ranges. The western one seems well enough, as it could be a continuation of the range a bit to the north, following the general shape of the continent. The eastern one looks just plain odd and unrealistic though. It runs right across the peninsula and stops abrubtly on the coasts, without appropriate island chains to indicate the ridge carrying on. It would look much better to have this second range running east-west along the southern coast of the peninsula.

[Jaxilon]

I'm liking how this is looking. I've been wrapped up in the Lite challenge so am only now getting over here to check out what you all have been working on.

How did you get Italy in the upper right corner or is that just me? hehe

[ravells]

Beautiful work as always, Dj!

[Ramah]

Indeed, looking wonderful as always, Dj.
Looking forward to seeing more of this.

[tilt]

beautiful colors, looking forward to seing how it'll progress ... I feel the north-eastern part of the world sticks a little out (it feels more 2D than 3D - if that makes sense?)

[Greason Wolfe]

You know, seeing your work, along with the work of several others, makes me wonder why I bother entering these challenges. Looking great, DJ, and I'll be waiting to see more.

GW

[Djekspek]

Thanks guys for the comments. Thanks Ghostman, the mountains are indeed off and Tilt you're right the northern parts looks kinda out-of-perspective. I'll try to fix that. hehe Jax, must be my subconsiousness (is that a word?) drawing some shapes from the back of my head... dont even really like italy (except for the food .... And GW, your work is pretty amazing as well so please keep "bothering" entering.
Just hope I can have some time on this, working on commissions in my sparse free time but hope there's a little time left this week to work on this. Wont get it all done but I'll try to do some more as I really want to practise this style... Anyway, it's great to see so many entries this month, beer must be inspiring to many I guess cheers!

[Djekspek]

Hmm, running out of time but managed to get it into something I had in my head... aimed for a sort of surrealistic look n feel... So I changed landshapes a little, detailled the features, drew some icons (wanted to make different one per race but didnt get to it), added content, painted a scroll, shield and a "hoppy" compass... (I snatched the parchment border from some other map). Idea of the content is to give some background on brewing ingredients that can be found around the world. Did some sketching and base coloring for the non-fleshed-out content. Not sure if I can spend much more on it (deadline is tomorrow right?) so probably this is the final version. cheers!

### Latest WIP ###

[Ramah]

Bah. Tried to give you some rep but I need to spread it around some.

Really beautiful map. I think this is better than your last map in this style (which I also loved) because the last one seemed more like a blatant copy whereas this is an extension of that style, incorporating your own uniqueness into it.
Really good stuff.