Still alive after three months of abstinence
Hey,
I'm back. I had lots of work to do back in March and April and only found time for my map in May.
So I guess it's time for an update of my work.
I just attached a WIP-Picture of my map as it looks like today.
Nerrac Map State of Progress.jpg
As you can see there are quite a lot things that haven't been there on the last pic I showed off.
First, I managed the problem of the small 'r' in the Country-name-font. I simply decided to write the names in big letters which also gives the font much more dignity and stability. I think that's quite suitable for country names.
Second, I added a road system in the east of the continent which will spread over to the south and west, in due course.
Third, I discovered many castles and citadels in the east.
Fourth, I created more names for the countries in the south and their capitals as well as for many places in the east, though a lot of names have still to be found.
Fifth, I changed the symbols for castles and fortifications so they all look like towers and castles and that stuff.
All those things are on different layers of course and could be shown individually.
My next project will be an economic layer with symbols for the countries economy.
My problem is that I'll need a lot of economic symbols to show the different things the countries produce. By this I mean symbols for the several sorts of corn, of cattle, of metals, of textils, of handcraft products and so on...
I hoped to find them here on the forum but at the moment the search function refuses to support me by delivering an error message.
If anyone could propose some good economic symbols, I'd be very happy and thankful.
Now I let you pause in awe of my work and you may ask any question you like.
I'm still working on this map, though the progress is rather slow. By working on other maps I further developed the style.
Here's an update. Finally I managed to shadow all the mountains, which took about 50 hours of work. Now I'm slowly starting on labelling the southwestern corner of the continent.
Nerrac Continental Map WIP-16-04-11_klein.jpg
I like the style of your map Eld, it´s like a map, the people in the past would have drawn of their continent, without the help of modern cartography and satellite-techniques, what means, that the real shapes of the continent would differ a lot to this men-made version. I prefer the version with less colour of course and I´m looking for your progress. I like your roads, they are so fine and thin, I would be glad of getting a tip, how you have done them
Keep on with your project, it´s good !!
Wow, that's quite a lot of hours.. and a long gap between an update.
Looking forward to another update (hopefully sooner this time)
That's looking really great. I don't have any constructive criticism to offer because I like pretty much everything you've got going here!
Thank you all for the praise, it's really raising my motivation up on a high level again.
@randigpanzrall:
I created the roads quite easily (in Gimp):
1) Set paths where the roads shall be. Here pay attention to nice shapes, no sharp edges and angles, rather smooth curves, depending on the terrain the road is running through and the scale of the map.
2) Stroke the path using the function Gimp offers. The settings are Black color, dots, 1px wide. (it's a bit difficult for me to translate into English and as you're German too I also give the German description of the settings: "Linienbreite 1, Farbe Schwarz, Vollfarbe. Stil: Punkte, runder Aufsatzstil, schräger Verbindungsstil, Rest egal."
3) Experiment with the look as there are some presets for dots and short lines and stuff.
However, the roads may look so thin because I rescaled the image due to the size limitations on the Guild. The original gimp data has twice as large edges and therefor four times as many pixels.
@Josiah
Yeah, I didn't expect the gap to be almost three years but I had lots of stuff to do in my life (finished my first B.A. studies, started a second one, this that and lots of other things). Also I started work on the Renaliac map in the other thread and city maps. Also i often work on the world itself, inventing things, discovering places, meeting people, making up languages and politics and history. So working on this map is only one part of many. However, it's an important part as I plan to one day finally finish the map and print it and hang it at the walls of my room.
The mapping speed now mostly depends on how fast I come up with names for the nameless parts as the mountains are eventually done and the style is now very much to my liking.
@Diamond
Your praise makes me giggle like an infant.
Haha, only 8 years later I come around with another update...turns out that worldbuilding and mapping and conlanging and inventing a magic system and storytelling is rather time consuming while having to have a fulltime job.Originally Posted by Josiah VE
Looking forward to another update (hopefully sooner this time
Meanwhile I reshaped a large part of the landmass, made up many names, changed names, changed fonts for the labelling, developed a method for forests, gave city-symbols colors referring to the prominent inhabiting species and a bunch of other things...
Also I drew many thematic maps based on this map for various topics of culture, history and stuff.
So here is the 'current' state of map (as of October 2022). Next steps include decoration, missing labels, map key and minor polishing.
Nerrac Continental Map WIP-22-10-09 medium.jpg
I stand by my previous comment. Hopefully I got some more baby giggles out of you.
I do think the forests make all the difference though. They fill out the map in some indefinable way.
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