A Little World Map Request

[The Cartographist]

Hello Everyone. A friend of mine asked me to take on a little cartography project for him, involving producing a better looking world map for his campaign. Unfortunately, I don't have the time right now. I was wondering if anyone is interested in doing it.

The task entails taking the two maps that I've attached, and turning them into a decent looking world.

Some specifics:
- Map to be about 3000pixels wide (and as tall as appropriate to maintain the proportions).
- Tolkein-esque in style, using muted colors for the various features.
- Please add rivers as the current maps are lacking them. (Most should drain to the ocean, but a few can drain into the inland sea and lakes on the two continents.)
- The depth lines on 'Elevation' indicate that the map would wrap around. This is no longer the case. The map does not indicate the entire surface of the planet; it covers an approximate area the size of Europe and Asia. The north edge is at about 85N while the south edge is at about 15S. The planet is approximately the size of the Earth.
- The 'Elevation' map basically indicates the de facto locations of hills and mountain ranges. In addition to those high areas indicated, feel free to add some other small mountain ranges or groupings of hills as your artistic license guides you.
- I don't need text or labels of any kind, nor do I need cities or settlements of any kind.
- Feel free to "roughen-up" the outlines of the various landmasses to make them more realistic, but please keep the overall shapes as close to the attached as possible.
- Please indicate increasing depths in the ocean with darker and darker shades of blue.

I've tried to be as specific as possible in the request so that a first stab from someone following them should be pretty close to perfect. I appreciate whoever will take the few hours to do this.

[Maybe I should just make this a mapping challenge: Take the attached pieces of visual crap and craft a stunning world map from them!! That would ensure a wide range of maps for my buddy. -- But I digress.]

[pyrandon]

I wish I had time for this--it would be a very, very fun project!

[Sigurd]

Well I've been considering random generators. I couldn't rightly turn down a random outline .

I'm mucking around with this at fairly low resolutions. Mostly playing with layers.

This is what I have for the physical layer with your contour lines. (I'm not 100% happy with them).




I took some liberties with the ocean contour, and probably should have upped the size\pixel count from the original. Any constructive criticism appreciated especially if the advice refers to CS2.




- Sigurd

[The Cartographist]

Sigurd – I really like the start of your efforts with this, and I really appreciate you taking the time to work on it—as does Dave, the friend for whom I’ve made this request.

A couple of thoughts:
- We would appreciate it if you could increase width to ~3000 pixels instead of the ~600 that it is now.
- Feel free to add intermediary contour elevations, i.e. while the original divided the map into +10k, +5k, 0, -5k, etc, feel free to include every 2500 or, even better, every 1000 as you think is necessary to make it look better.
- If you could generally make the rivers on the western continent longer than you currently have them, we would appreciate it.
- If you could apply the same shading that you have around the ocean coastlines to the inland sea/lake coastlines, we would appreciate it.
- We think that it would look better if all of the colors (the blues and the greens) were a little more muted.
- It appears that you have a cloud pattern over all of the land, such that land at the same elevation can be one of several different shades of green. We would prefer all land at a particular elevation to be the same color. (I think that once you add more intermediary contours, there will be enough variation in the land colors.)

Obviously, the last comment will be affected once you add various terrain types in different colors.

[Sigurd]

- Feel free to add intermediary contour elevations, i.e. while the original divided the map into +10k, +5k, 0, -5k, etc, feel free to include every 2500 or, even better, every 1000 as you think is necessary to make it look better.

I generally don't do contour lines. I'll try for a clear height field and go from there. Do you know some good tutorials for contour lines in Photoshop?

If you have a heightfield, just blur it slightly then posterize it down to the number of contour levels you want. Select similar colurs and stroke to get the contour lines.

-Rob A>

[Sigurd]

The original is 12000 x 6000

Here's a smaller png

http://wm23.inbox.com/thumbs/1d_9faa...b_oP.png.thumb


I don't like the blockish lines on the land. The colours probably aren't muted enough for you either.


Two questions -

1. what's this for?
2. The lakes you have at the top of the mountains in the western continent - are they really deep? Or magic? or????


- Sigurd

[Sigurd]

Its been quite a while. I'm going to assume this is closed then.

Sigurd

[Gamerprinter]

Send a private message to Cartographist and ask - that's the best way, if you're looking for some kind of response. Maybe the thread is not dead...

[The Cartographist]

Sigurd - I've been out of pocket for quite some time. I apologize.

To answer your questions:

1. what's this for?

It is a friend's campaign world. He has actually generated a wiki for himself and a few other friends to archive all of the written docs. (He did this a few weeks before the Guild happened upon the same idea.) This map will be the master world map that appears on the wiki once it's complete.

2. The lakes you have at the top of the mountains in the western continent - are they really deep? Or magic? or????

The northernmost is extremely deep. The others, not particularly so. Nor are they magical.

Actually, I like the colors as they are. And I agree with you that the blockish lines aren't all that appealing.

If you could pick it back up and continue your efforts with this, it would be greatly appreciated.