Big WIP Project - Neoseilthir

[Juggernaut1981]

Here's the next installment. Begun the next major phase: Mountains. I was inspired to, and decided to, do every last sucker the old school way: drawn them in by hand. I'm getting better at "draw by mouse" when I can't use my tablet PC.

Here is the first of the major mountain ranges done (at least for me since there was a campaign that happened all around this mountain range). I present to you the first sketchings of the Dragon's Back Mountains.

Humans keep on calling it the Dragon's Back Mountains because it reminds them of a dragon's body. Dwarves use the name because they swear there are the petrified bones of a spectacularly large dragon encased under the stone. Is that the real reason? Doesn't matter... (and I'm not going to tell).

[Juggernaut1981]

Update: Worked more on the mountains & hills. Drew in some rivers. Tossed in some of the empire names. Decided that Caslon will be the Font of Empires. I'm not sure what other fonts I might want to use for other landforms... but that's a road to cross later.

[Juggernaut1981]

Drafted up the mountains on Skyreach Island. Doing maybe 100 mountains and a bunch of hills has certainly improved my speed... Also decided that Dominican will be used to name land-features and I'm trying to use a colour that will appear somewhere near Vermillion, rather than a Cardinal Red. If it doesn't look like that on your machine, please send me the colour code that you understand is closer to Vermillion. (Red Green Blue + Saturation/Value is best for me atm...)

As usual people, C&C. Comment if you like it, hate it, think I should include more diseased leprechauns...

[Ascension]

The only thing really grabbing me at the moment is the mountain shape-line. I know you're doing it with a mouse and so the line stays one size but if there is a Smudge tool in gimp I would grab the end of each little line and smudge it out a bit. The way that smudge works in PS is that it also tapers the line creating a faded point. This is how I always did it before getting comfortable with the tablet. I'd do that for the river tips, too.

The only other thing is the paper looks like a mustard color. If that's what you're wanting then cool but if not I'd go something more tan with a hint of red to give it just a blush of orangeyness. I might also do up a layer of clouds, set the blend to overlay, and then turn the opacity down to give the paper some variation grunge.

So, mostly just tweaks but overall you have a good grasp on things.

[Juggernaut1981]

Okay, because I'm not particularly good with the more drawing-like aspects...

Are you suggesting smudging from the line to the blank-space or from the blank space into the line?

[Ascension]

End of the line to the empty space.

[Steel General]

I think this is coming along nicely, though I do agree with Ascension about the background color - to 'yellow'.

[Juggernaut1981]

Ascension & SG> Yeah I can easily modify that later. It's just a layer with that colour sitting all the way down the bottom. Ditto with the "crumpling/distressing", I'll just toss them in later. But thanks for the positive comments.

[Juggernaut1981]

Updated: Added in colouring for the "sea". Basically 2 fills with the light blue from the original pallette at 40% opacity on a blurred-masked-transparent layer. Pushed up the red further in the "background" colour. Added a "uneven-ness" Overlay layer (probably tune that down a bit). More mountains, coloured in lakes, etc.

[Kolfax]

I stumbled across this (I'm not sure how) looking for information on how to decide where to places lakes on my map and decided to read what you were doing and I wanted to just say that I think that your mountains look very authentic -probably not the right word- for this map...

The fact that you drew them with a mouse makes it even more astonishing to me... something I'll have to learn how to do.

-Kolfax