1st Fantasy Map

[Lifthrasir]

I'm a member of a French site on which there are RPG's. They set their stories on Toril, on 2 Southern continents mostly unknown. That gives them all freedom their desire.
Anyway, To practice Photoshop in a different manner, I'm currently making a map of one of these continents and based on their writtings.

Here is the worls map of Toril (for information):

 

Source: The Forgotten Realms Wiki

In the red circle, the area I'm mapping (or trying to map ).

Step 1:
The map basis with the rivers and primary textures.

 

Step 2:
Southern cliffs added and mountains in progress.

 

Step 3:
Mountains textured.

 

Step 4:
Starting the marshes on the East coast.

 

I may add some colours later on to reflect the different areas but I'm not sure yet and that will be at the end anyway. Critics and comments are welcome

[eepjr24]

I think it looks good. From a real world perspective, rivers don't do what they are shown doing on this map. You can obviously make it work with magic, etc. But once a river joins it splits generally only for brief periods and very specific circumstances. Otherwise the water simply follows gravity and wears down barriers in it's way.

I like the cliffs and the marsh so far, very well put together.

- E

[Lifthrasir]

Thanks for your comment.
I agree about the rivers. They are based on an old map I've found on that site and obviously quickly drawn. I think that I will review that

[Lifthrasir]

I've reviewed my work with something bigger in order to get more freedom. So I've started all over with a map at 2048 x 2048 with 300 dpi.
Below, the basis:

 

The main difficulty here was to represent the cliffs in the South part of the map, something I finally solved by duplicating the land mass layer, then by applying an emboss effect and finally by associating a layer mask to hide the unnecessary parts. Last step was to use an oil paint filter.

I'm currently working on the rivers and mountains.

[eepjr24]

Very nice! I am going to snag that cliff tip and see if I can make it work as well in GIMP.

- E

[Lifthrasir]

Don't hesitate to revert to me if you need more details about the cliff tip

[Ilanthar]

Nice parchment look.

[Lifthrasir]

Thanks. Actually, I've used 3 layers for that texture:
1 stone.
1 concrete.
1 old paper.

[Ilanthar]

Yup, most of my late paper textures are a mix (often two textures and one layer of colour adjustment).

[Lifthrasir]

The project above is currently on hiatus because I'm currently working on a mod based on the Total War: Shogun 2 game. The mod is supposed to take place mostly around the North Sea around 1200 AD.
For now, I'm basically preparing the job, mostly working on the map itself. Note that the following stuff is just a draft that will be used to create the necessary files for the game.
My first task was to find a map of the area with a very high resolution as the game uses something about 16384 x 8192 pixels. I've finally ended up with the Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS). You need to register (for free) to use it. It gives you access to a world map, itself divided in square areas, themselves divided again in squares. I've just save the pic of each necessary square and then I've merged them with Photoshop (410 in total). Note that I had to compress it a bit. Here is the result:

 

--- click on it to enlarge

But that's a map showing the North Sea nowadays. Actually, the coasts lines were different at the beginning of the 13th century. After some researches, I've modified it, mostly the Kent in England and all the Frisian coast (from Netherlands to Denmark). I think that I should be quite close to how they look like in reality at that time:

 

--- click on it to enlarge

Note: I've implementented the lakes but still have to do the rivers. That's the downside of ALOS unfortunately.

If you spot any mistake, please, let me know.