The New Empire - WIP

[Coyotemax]

Progress!
I updated the coast outlines a bit to look more woodcut along the inner portion of the line (rough seaward and smooth landward didn't feel right). I updated the borders as well, I really like the way they're looking, still some erasing to do. I will likely adjust the bars on the edges to match the scale marker too, I don't see why not, and I'll need something to do while I procrastinate on the forests. The mountains seem like they're going to work, the first set is placed in already. Still trying to decide on how to represent political borders though.
Terrain features are easy, forests, rivers, and mountains help define some of the borders, but I'll have to see how I can work it up so the boundaries don't get lost in the features. I may have to go a bit more sparse on the forests so things don't get overwhelming, especially on the islands where there's more towns named.

Once again didn't get as much done as I was hoping, but the wife has her own ideas on what constitues a priority on friday nights

[Coyotemax]

More progress. Finished the mountains, most of the decorations, updated the woodcut effect on a few things (though I may redo the compass and seals) and numerous other details fixed such as the borders.

Rivers next, then political borders (yikes, still thinking on those, but I think I have a plan) and finally towns and labels - then forests last, so I can place them around existing items for readability.

Getting close! I'm definitely getting the hang of the woodcut at this point, I'm not afraid to run it through at different resolutions to test it out before settling now that I have it down to a quick process. I'd like to set up an action button, but I need different dpi's for different elements, so it's hard to set a single one up. Doesn't take long at least now

[Gidde]

Looking good! Can't wait to see the rest.

[Ramah]

It's looking wonderful CM. I always prefer your hand-drawn and more experimental maps to your more sattelitey ones. Which is not to say the latter ones are bad, just that the former ones are always VERY good.

[Coyotemax]

I have a lot of fun with the satellite styled ones, but I think that's partly because I do have fun experimenting outside of my usual styles I've always preferred the hand drawn anyhow, but it's no fun if I don't push myself

And man, this is really looking good now the rivers and borders are done. Fleshed out the blank spaces well so far, but I'll finish the labeling before i post an update.

[Coyotemax]

Incidentally, with the resizing for posting on the forum, it's losing huge bucketloads of details. Attached is an unresized crop so you can see where it's heading

I'm almost ready to start on forests now, finishing the banners and embellishments now And I have to say, the tablet makes me SOOOO HAPPY. Sometimes the best way to make something look hand-drawn is to hand-draw it

[Coyotemax]

The forests were great before I slapped the woodcut effect on them
I seriously need to find another way to do them.

But, that's for tomorrow. I've been working on this for at least 12 hours now, time for a break!

[Ascension]

You might have to make them a bit bigger so that the woodcut doesn't interfere as much.

[RobA]

I made a 500x500 pattern (larger to reduce the appearance of repeating patterns in the final product) of hand drawn lines, every 10px using a 3px brush (one of the Dry Media preset brushes). Turned that into a tiling pattern. Took the basic land layer to a new file, gave it a medium gray colour, then put a 100px stroke with a gradient fill, same grey as the land, fading to white. I then converted to Bitmap, and when the requester screen came up, told it to use a custom dithering pattern - the one I'd just created. That gave me the basic woodcut lines, and then I just put that layer back in the original file (after converting back to grayscale/rgb), set it to multiply, then ran a light gaussian blur and masked off the inner portion.

FYI, we refer to that as the S. John Ross Technique: http://www.io.com/~sjohn/uresia-maps.htm

-Rob A>

[Coyotemax]

Yes! That's the one. Thanks!