Wow, this looks great Josiah. I especially like how you did forests and the southern desertland. Good job so far.
Hello everyone! This is the project I have been working on for the past few weeks. It's a huge map with many cities and locations (which aren't on here yet). So far I have most of the terrain and sea done.
Let me know what you think!
Annydwyr1.jpg
Wow, this looks great Josiah. I especially like how you did forests and the southern desertland. Good job so far.
Looking great so far Josiah. I'm quite fond of those forests. Look forward to watching this progress.
Cheers,
-Arsheesh
Amazing job Josiah ! I, too, love the result you got with the forests. Would you mind sharing how you did it ?
Hey Josiah
Great looking map.
I do like the forests, but...
(I'm nitpicking now) there do seem to be horizontal bands developing in the otherwise random patterns in just a couple of the tree areas, particularly in the northernmost reaches. You know how it is with me, though. I see patterns EVERYWHERE! LOL!
Great job on this Josiah, the scale of the mountains to the forest is one of the best I've seen, Maybe some shoreline waves might help the landmass connect to the water better.
Thanks Voolf!
Thank you very much Arsheesh, I'm glad you like it.
Thanks Thomas!
My, my. Those forests seem to be popular. I'll do a quick write-up of how they were done at the bottom of this post.
Thanks Mouse!
I think you're right about the horizontal streaks. I did the forest simply with a dynamic brush so I filled them in with my brush stroking horizontally. Honestly in some places I actually liked the horizontal pattern, especially in pine forest in the north.
Thanks so much Snodsy!
Yes, excellent idea. I shall add that.
QUICK FOREST TUTORIAL
The forests are actually very quick and easy, putting dynamic brushes and layer styles to use.
The basics :
First, layer in the forest with a round black brush, with scattering and shape dynamics. You can later touch up the forest around the base of mountains if they covered it too much. Make sure to have a layer mask so no forest gets onto the sea. Then, layer styles of drop shadow, inner glow, bevel and emboss, colour overlay, and pattern overly.
The exact settings I used on this map:
Brush: Hard round brush, size 10, spacing 25%. Size jitter 30%, pressure size, minimum diameter 20%. Scattering 700%.
Drop Shadow: Opacity 75%, Distance 5, Spread 0, Size 2.
Inner Glow: Black, Opacity 75%, Size 24
Bevel and Emboss: Depth 100%, Size 5, Highlight mode: Soft light with opacity at 25%, Shadow mode on soft light with opacity at 40%. I also added a texture with the bevel and emboss.
Colour Overlay: If you want all the forests one colour, you can do a colour overlay on multiply. If you want different colour in forest for different regions, you can use a layer with clipping mask to the forest layer and paint the colour you want, on multiply.
You can then overlay a texture if you would like some some more texture to the forest, such as a parchment.
NOTE: You should probably create a mask on the forest layer around the rivers.
NOTE: I am using Photoshop CS2.
And that's all. You can now paint in decent forests on your map. I hope someone finds it useful.
This is looking awesome already Josiah! Always love your use of colours!
The forests aren't to my taste, but they've certainly got their own look to them and I like the way you've snow-capped them towards the top!
This is shaping up really nicely!
This looks amazing! Really nice work, I can't wait to see what it looks like finished!
This map looks fantastic!