Sketch 1: My dear Arramatapo...

[kacey]

I'm so glad you didn't take my earlier comment the wrong way, I'm a big fan of yours. I like the new font better then the last one, but I'm still partial to the first. Perusing through sites like Dafont really do have a way of eating up all ones time. The added stains look good, I've never heard of Genetica before. Can't wait to see what you do with the map part of it, it's looking good so far.

[Mouse]

And since I greatly admire the beautiful finesse of your work, I am an equally big fan of yours, Kacey, so I think we may be a bit stuck in a mutual appreciation society here! LOL.

I was looking at dafont.com for at least a couple of hours.... so long in fact that the fonts all started to look the same in the end (which I know they are not). There are simply thousands of them!

I think, now, that I will leave the font alone and get on with the mapping - come back to it when I'm done with the hills... and the mountains... and the bogs... not to mention the dragons, of course

[Mouse]

Oh yes - I clean forgot!

Genetica is a piece of software designed to generate seamless textures. You can modify preset textures or create your own from scratch. I have only made a couple so far, and less than half of them were from scratch. the parchment, for instance is based on a legacy parchment texture, to which I added folds and wrinkles. Fortunately there is a huge library of legacy presets

[Mouse]

This is a little early in the day for me to post - only midday here in the UK, but I would really love to know if you think the method of colouring this map works.

We have to bear in mind that Arramatapo's dad is stuck in the back of a badly lit dragon's cave, and that his only tools are the ones he had in his carry sac when the dragon ate his mule and most of his equipment... while he escaped (Poor Minty).

To draw this map he has at his disposal one journal, from which the page has been torn/cut a couple of quills, a set of 12 coloured inks for illustrations and a single relatively large ink wash brush.

Please let me know what you think. The dragon by the way, is just a sketch - not the finished article.

Arramatapo sketch 04.JPG

As a side note. I had to write an entire page of the journal to create the text showing through the paper from the other side, so I'll upload that one as well so you can see what happened to Arramatapo's dad on the day he fell in the dragon's pit

Background text for Arramatapo letter.png

[Mouse]

Dragon becomes just a head. New path. This took several hours of work, believe it or not! LOL

[Katto]

Genetica is a good piece of software, but it seems to be abandoned. My advice: get all the resources a quickly as you can...

[Mouse]

Oh No!!!

I had the abandoned software problem with Texture Maker before I bought Genetica, and nearly didn't get my money back from the sellers - had to get my bank in on the act before they would even respond.

Don't tell me Genetica's going the same way

[Katto]

I don't know it, but looking at the forum activities you will get an idea...
As I said, get all the resources and you will be fine

[Mouse]

Why is it that all these cool pieces of software seem to die out?

Thanks for the tip-off Katto

[Katto]

A lot of of these seamless making texture softwares were made for 3D software. With the rise of phsyically based rendering (PBR) around 2 years ago, they missed to get to the actual state of tech, because they were one (or two man) show(s) IMO. No problem for the traditional 2D user.