Reply With QuoteWell after an hour or so of 'chewing on it' I voted for ArmoredGear7 - though I easily could've voted for anyone else (except myself).
Congrats to all who finished!
I placed my vote for Ascension, although there were several worthy entries. Ascension is my mentor and his mastery of style and color in Photoshop is an inspiration. I learn things every time I look at one of his maps.
I dare say I have never seen a challenge here that had so many really good entries. I have rep'd everyone who finished simply because they flat out deserved it. Good job guys!
Well after an hour or so of 'chewing on it' I voted for ArmoredGear7 - though I easily could've voted for anyone else (except myself).
Congrats to all who finished!
My Finished Maps | My Challenge Maps | Still poking around occasionally...
Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
I voted by putting everyone in a bracket like college basketball march madness. Top-down on one side, artsy on the other. CM has the most authentic looking and beautiful image but RJ's is more "mappy"...but just barely. RJ to the semi-finals. SG and Imm were good but there was just something missing that was present with AG7 and MM...polish. Imm is getting closer and will win one of these soon, I'll have to seed him higher for the next march madness
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
This is a really, really tough choice for me.
Usually, I know what I like.
I just put all the pieces in question next to each other and decide.
Which I did... but this is a tough one nonetheless.
But decisions have to be made, so I went with Armoredgear.
It was no easy descision. Very good entries all around.
I also deeply respect the amount of work that went into this challenge. The added up work hours of all the pieces must be insane.
Yeah tough with one vote. I went with AG too because I liked the natural feel of layout and the mix up of buildings. MM's one had that characteristic too but the buildings were mostly at 90 deg so that was a near miss this time. I really liked the artsy one of CM. I think that sort of style fits the task better than the rest and that made it a close contender too. Ascensions, Steels and Immolates maps all looked great but I thought that it was just too uniform in places. I know its tough changing stamps on a huge estate but it needs it a bit. RJs map looked good but I think a city map needs a lot of time which is a scare resource really and I knew I would not have been able to muster enough to make even a paltry attempt so well done to all.
Heh. I considered canting the city about 20 degrees about a week ago, but decided not to. Live and learn.
RR: It's funny but I never talked about the methodology I used on my buildings, which really does have everything to do with the "look" of the map. I didn't really think about it until you mentioned "stamps", which I assume is a reference to the use of brushes or other means to put a pre-designed structure in place.
The method I used was one suggested by Butch Curry who you should all be familiar with if you use Photoshop. I used the line tool at varying widths from about six pixels to well over a hundred. That's all my buildings were is lines with layer affects added on. For your gee whiz consumption.
In the end, I had to take all the artistic elements out of the equation, they are all great renditions. There are just so many things that make each map great on their own. I broke it down into smaller questions - which one looked most maplike, which one could I see being printed out as a supplement in an adventure, which one is best for labelling, and so on. It kept being too hard to decide.. finally what I boiled it down to was this - which one gives the best following of existing material (tanaka's challenge). And to be honest, mysticmagellan took that one with a clear lead in my opinion - so after 20 mins of casting around for something to say "that one has better elements" I finally found something, so goes my vote.
Well done to all, and certainly thanks for the inspiration and advice (and votes, even!) that got my own map to where it is. I'll Rep where I can, and hopefully I can get to everyone this time around
Dang, this was fun!
My finished maps
"...sometimes the most efficient way to make something look drawn by hand is to simply draw it by hand..."
Watching MysticMagellan finish before I had done most of my Photoshop work was tough. In my mind's eye, what I originally intended to make was very close to what MM made; that probably shows in the style similarity in our results. It was tough to work around my original plan to come up with something different.
MM's map set the bar for me and it was a real incentive to work really hard to develop my own solution. Anybody that can make a map that beautiful and get me working hard gets my vote! (and some rep too)
Unless otherwise noted, all of my posted work is free for use and redistribution under
the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 licence.
I love Asian maps! And I also very much enjoy city maps (still have to create my first one). All finished entries are of excellent quality. So, as everybody else, I had a tough time picking my personal winner. In the end, I went for MysticMagellan. Armoredgear7's map looks a bit more professional and the hills on the left side of the map are a fantastic addition. However, MysticMagellan's map triggers my inspiration and makes me want to walk through the streets of Oten'jo. To me, the various gardens, the buildings which I assume are temples and the city's fortress make the difference. But that's probably a matter of personal preference
Last edited by mogul76; 08-28-2009 at 03:25 AM.
Posting Permissions
