Eyar Madhri Island Nation by Greason Wolfe

[song]

Wow, I love the way those mountains are developing!

[Greason Wolfe]

So, I just finished up the new erosion sequence. In Wilbur, things seem to look pretty good, but the true test is how it will render out in Terragen. I've got that started, but it will be a few hours since I'm running all the renders at a fairly large size for the sake of detail. Should have something to post in the wee hours of the morning before I head out to work, or after I get home for the day. In the mean time, I'll be thinking about how I intend to add in the forests and what not. Building them into the terrain isn't so difficult, but with the grey-scale coloring scheme, getting them to stand out against the underlying terrain may prove to be a bit of a headache.

GW

[Greason Wolfe]

The hills aren't quite there yet, but they're getting closer. I'm thinking one more "tweaking" pass should do the trick. The mountains are pretty well set at this point, and, unless a better idea comes flashing through my brain, I don't expect them to change any time in the near future. I believe, at this point, I'll start working on the river/creek flow and shaping the lakes a little better. I've got a couple ideas in mind when it comes to adding forests, but I'll have to wait and see which method works best. Until then, here's the latest render.

GW

[Greason Wolfe]

So, I got side-tracked by work, and, helping a friend with a house remodeling project. As it happens, this particular friend is a casual role-player and author, and we got to talking about this mapping project. He showed a bit of interest in it as both a role-player and author and started bouncing ideas my way. Those ideas have born fruit.

As happy as I was with the way the mountains were looking, some of my friend’s suggestions got me to thinking about the overall shape of the island as well as a bit of inspiration from the real world in the form of Crater Lake in Southern Oregon.

I’ve only visited Crater Lake a couple of times, but it is, at least for me, one of the coolest places I’ve ever been. The whole concept of a volcano collapsing in on itself and, ultimately, developing into a land-locked lake really struck a chord with me. Even better was the fact that there is an island in that lake. The Klamath peoples even had a story (myth/legend) as to how all of this had come about. To save a bit of time, here is a link to the wikipedia page for Crater Lake.

Crater Lake - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Now, originally, this project was to be comprised of four islands. Three of those islands would be inhabited while the fourth (the one I started working on at the beginning of this thread) would be sacred ground and, mostly, uninhabited. When I started considering my friend’s suggestions and bringing Crater Lake into the equation, things got interesting. So I started to ask myself “what if?”

What if I re-created Crater Lake with the island in the lake being sacred?

What if, in re-creating Crater Lake, I did so on a much larger scale, making it the “center piece” of an even larger island?

What if divine intervention prevented the inhabitants from descending the inner face to reach the lake and sacred island?

What if one person in particular had earned “divine favor” and discovered a way to reach the lake and sacred island?

What if the lake wasn’t truly land-locked? What if there were “underground” rivers that would allow access to the lake and sacred island?

There were a whole bunch of other “what ifs” that I asked myself, but those that I’ve listed were the core of what has become a re-booted project. The back-story and history that I’d been developing for this map had to be changed a bit, but they’re stronger now, more cohesive. And, obviously, I’ve had to start over as far as the actual mapping process goes. But the vision of my end goal is much clearer now. I know almost exactly where I want to go with this.

So, over this last weekend, I sort of slapped together a rough version of the new map for this project. I feel pretty good about the overall shape of the entire island. I even like the smaller, off-shore islands. My “Crater Lake” didn’t turn out quite as well as I had hoped, but, after all, this was just a rough version. To my surprise, I hit on a coloring scheme that I really liked. It needs a bit of tweaking (a bit too much brown, I think) to bring it in line with a more forested/jungle-like look, but it’s pretty darn close to what I’m hoping for. Mind you, the water is very, Very generic, and I’ll change that when I’m ready to start my final rendering process. I know they're rather small, but I wanted to put something up here for anyone wanting to offer feedback, all of which I always appreciate. For now, I’m off to work out the “Crater Lake” portion of the map and give that more of a cone-like look rather than the upside-down bowl-like look it currently has.

GW