First map!

[lxdengar]

Hi Folks,

I apologize for being away so long, I had one major project at work to finish which involved a big crunch, and that really took the wind out of my sails. That being done, I've been back at it a bit more, mostly writing, but felt the need to jump back on the map in the last day or so. Actually it was a nice break and gave me a new eye on the inner sea, which I've made some changes to. Sometimes, a break away is just what you need.

I took out the secondary and tertiary inlets and expanded the main one, as they were not especially important to the story. I like the feel of the inner sea more now. I also added the southern island continent, and took a swipe at all of the islands and coastlines overall. I also think I need to 'smooth out' a couple of sections of the continents, they're feeling a bit busy in places.

Next its back to drawing mountains, and figuring out rivers. I'm sure I'll need help with that. Thanks for all the support and advice.

Cheers!

outline_finished3.jpg

[lxdengar]

Another update, more mountains. I'll start some trees and smaller items next. Right now, my hand is about to fall off, so its time to take a break. These aren't cleaned up yet, you can still seem some pencil lines here and there.

mountains_combined_page2.jpg

[lxdengar]

One more update for tonight. Lol, can't help myself this it too much fun!

I started playing around with Coyotemax's excellent woodcut tutorial (http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...-for-the-ocean), and made my own line texture. Nice tutorial.

Here's a small section. I'll probably do it one more time, with different selection sets for different expand/feather ratios.

Fun.jpg

[kestrelgrey]

Wow. This is impressive. The coastlines are very natural, the colors are really nice (neutral, readable, not too strong, easy to tell apart). Those mountains, though, are incredible. I can't wait to see what you do with them. They might not be entirely cleaned up yet, but they're just stunning. Part of me wants to try my hand at drawing my own. Part of me just wants to run with yours ^_^ Looking forward to more.

[lxdengar]

Thanks! I'll try putting together two test this week, a cluster of mountains and a range. I might need one more sheet of mountains for diversity.

I can turn the mountains into a brush set at the end of all this, so anyone can use them.

[lxdengar]

I've started the cleanup, and that should take another night, but I had a question - how to most people approach the layout of hand-drawn mountains like this? Do you build up the ranges by using individual layers to create clusters of mountains, consolidating as you go? Make them brushes? I'd be curious for some good advice here.

I was thinking about using the large consolidated pages, and dragging them into new layers within the map document, but it seems that I'll need a good mask for each mountain, in order to make sure they're cut out correctly.

Thanks!

[Blaidd Drwg]

I'm looking forward to seeing how you do it (masks always creep me out ;P). It looks very promising; keep it up!

[Lyandra]

This is going to be a great map! Keep going!

[lxdengar]

Man, lots of masks!

I gave up trying to do a mask for each mountain, and grouped them in threes and fours. It took about four days to do the one page - clean up, levels and mask channels, but they're all separated, and are ready for layout! Thank goodness for the magnetic lasso tool.

So to put it all together, I took a swipe at laying out some mountains tonight - now that the masks are all there, its pretty easy to put them in.

These are just some basic colors - I darkened the shadowed side and put some small highlights on the sunlit side - I'm not sold on the lighting, and I'd be curious to hear what people think. Sorry if it seems a little soft - I brought this down from the 1800 dpi original scan to 72 dpi for a test.

Thanks again for all your encouragement and advice! Layout begins this weekend.

mountain_test2_small.jpg

[arsheesh]

Those mountains look fantastic! I'm going to have to keep tabs on this thread.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh