Fantasy Regional Map for a Campaign

[damonmensch]

Hello all, I'm currently working on a map for a region of a tabletop campaign I'm leading and wanted some critique and pointers on the work.

Here is what I have done so far.
Untitled-1.jpg

I'm trying to give it more of a hand drawn/painted feel. Any suggestions anyone might have to give it more hand drawn, less cgi feel would be appreciated.

[RothgirFellhall]

I'm no expert so don't take my word as gold, but have you thought about making the tree images solid in the middle rather than transparent? To me they look copy and pasted since I can see the lines of the world underneath which immediately makes it feel like it was done on a pc.
Alternatively if you're trying to make it look like the rough lines all throughout is the paper it's on drawn on, try putting on the whole page rather than just the landmasses?

[SJS]

You might also use some hatch lines for the areas of shadow.

[Scoopz]

tree stuff!

but also, that water. Make it darker.

Anyways, despite what Rothgir has pointed out I quite enjoy your trees... and your mountains for that matter.

[Jalyha]

The main detractor from "hand-drawn" for me is the blue glow around the coast ?

[madcowchef]

Great start. The texture on the land looks wrong to me looks neither inked nor painted. I'd ink in the land border to define it (stroke effect in Photoshop). I also agree that putting a rough texture over it with very low transparency would help age it. Definitely darken the water, looks like an over exposed picture at the moment. I'd cut the rivers into the land mass rather than hover them above too. All criticism aside though it already is well on its way to being both interesting and functional.

[damonmensch]

I have a crumpled, stained parchment texture for use at the end, but before I throw it in I wanted to get the rest of it looking more drawn first.

Any suggestions on how to make the coast line look more drawn? Especially the water effect off of it.

[madcowchef]

What program are you using? It makes it much easier to tailor advice.

[damonmensch]

What program are you using? It makes it much easier to tailor advice.

I generated the base shape with Fractal Terrains, everything else Photoshop

[madcowchef]

Drop shadow or glow have several mapping options that can give the double lined effect you see on older maps and a stroke effect can set off the land map itself, you can find both under layer effects.

I found this tutorial particularly helpful
Http://www.cartographersguild.com/tu...photoshop.html