February 2016 Challenge: Middle-Earth

[Ilanthar]

The font is looking excellent, as well as the map. Worth the hours spent I'd say !

[Carnifex]

The font is looking excellent, as well as the map. Worth the hours spent I'd say !

Thanks! I recieved some wuestions about the font program and I made the font in this program:
http://www.cr8software.net/typelight.html
I don't know much about it (installed it a few days ago) but it was easy to make a font I think. I drew the glyphs in Illiustrator, saved individually as svg and imported to the font program. You can also draw in the program directly.

fontlight.jpg

[ravells]

Really nice work on the font, Carnifex! How did you do the bevels afterwards?

[Carnifex]

Really nice work on the font, Carnifex! How did you do the bevels afterwards?

The gold text effect is a rather standard layer effect. Has it not been covered in a tutorial?

[ravells]

probably! I was just being lazy!

[LordEntrails]

First impression, too green. It looks like everything is a giant forest.

When looking closer, the detail is wonderful. Labels are clear and easy to find, but unobtrusive.

Well done, if only I could get over the impression that everything except Mordor is a forest.

[Carnifex]

First impression, too green. It looks like everything is a giant forest.

When looking closer, the detail is wonderful. Labels are clear and easy to find, but unobtrusive.

Well done, if only I could get over the impression that everything except Mordor is a forest.

Thanks for your comment!

Well making a map that looks good both zoomed in and zoomed out are quite dificult (sometimes impossible?). I might imagine the grasslands could be a little bit more yellowish. Also if you see my earlier versions the grasslands are a bit more flat... which might look better and more flat and grassy... but zoomed in they look a bit bland.

[Carnifex]

Really nice work on the font, Carnifex! How did you do the bevels afterwards?

Ok! A mini tutorial!

I am terribly lazy too

I have a Swedish version of Photoshop but I do an educated guess on the English.
Note: Many effects are resolution dependant and dependant on the size of the text! I have used a 70pt text. I always use CMYK documents but the tutorial work good on a RGB as well.

1. USE 100% BLACK COLOR ON TEXT
Use black color on your text.

2. Select the text layer (advanced option: put all text layers in a layer group and add the layer style to the group)

3. BEVEL AND EMBOSS
Layer> Layer style > Bevel and emboss
choose: Inner bevel (?)
Choose: Chisel Hard (?)
Bits: 250%
Size: 20px
Angle: 120
Height: 40
Highlight: 100% raster / white
Shadow: 70% multiply /dark redbrown

4. Then pick "texture" Choose: Gray granite (?)
Scale 100%
Depth: +25%

5. COLOR OVERLAY
Layer> Layer style > color overlay
Pick " Color overlay": I used C:0 M:28 Y:96 K:0 (or RGB: R:255/G:190/B:30)

6. SHADOW
Layer> Layer style > Shadow
The shadow: 100% multiply a very dark redbrown color.
Size: 43 px
Grain: 18%

gold_text.jpg

[Carnifex]

Update. Added slightly more yellow tint to grasslands etc. Comments welcome

### LATEST WIP ###
Middle-earth_12b_50.jpg

[ravells]

Thanks for the tut! Carni! It's looking perfect. I can't decide whether the labels are too dominant (or whether they are actually better that way) or if some should be in all caps and others in initial caps. But as I said, it's pretty much the best map of ME I've ever seen.