January Entry: World of Graelor

[Malakor]

I decided to put my meager skills into the mix of fine maps for this months challenge.

I'm going to create a 36" x 24" "Old-School" Styled map for a world I'm calling Graelor (just because that is the name that came to mind )

I'm going to incorporate some of the techniques I used in my Kingdom map and some of the results from the poll I posted in the regional mapping area with my question regarding forest styles.

My first step was to create the continental land masses.

I selected a small area, used a Clouds filter and then sized it up to almost the full size of the map.

I then adjusted the brightness and the threshold to create the landmasses.

I used this as a base level to create a white filled batch of landmasses that I put a stroke and a very small inner glow on.

I used the offset with wrap to make the left and right sides actually wrap around. Didn't worry about the top and bottom, I don't want to show the entire polar regions of the world.

These images are all sized down to 3600 x 2400 at 300 dpi. The working image is actually 300 dpi and 36" x 24" (10,800 x 7,200)

[Malakor]

Next I've put in the major mountain ranges and the deserts (yeah, I got both of these steps done yesterday, just haven't had a chance to post them yet)

### Latest WIP ###

[Steel General]

Yippee another entry!

Looking forward to seeing more of this.

[Ascension]

Holy frejoles that's some serious amount of work putting those mountains in...kudos for the persistence

[joão paulo]

Competition continues!

Very well.

[Malakor]

During my lunch hour today I was able to get a coastal effect that worked for me (I tried for the woodcut effect but never could get it to look like what I wanted).

I then brushed in my forests. I've decided against showing tree trunks at this scale I Think. When I tried it, it kind of looked like an additional blur or shadow under the forest areas.

For regional maps, I'll probably use an effect similar to the B and/or C that I posted in my poll.

Now that I'm home for the evening, I'll be looking at names for the various locales.


### Latest WIP ###

[Ascension]

Lookin pretty good there, nice job so far.

[Korash]

looking good.

1 critique though. It might just be me and me ancient eyes, but I am seeing the forests as standing higher than the mountains. Maybe do something about the shadow around them, or make the mountains larger.

[Malakor]

Ah yes, these are the famous cloud forests of Graelor

Thanks for pointing that out Korash, I'll see if reducing the shadow a tad helps any.

I've named all the pertinent points, and sent all the impertinent points off to stand in a corner.

This map is now almost done, except for coming up with a suitable border and fine tuning a bit.

### Latest WIP ###

[Ascension]

I know ya gotta shrink the image size down to upload but the forests just look like squiggly blobs to me and I thought they were lakes. Do they look better at full size? I'd like to see a screencap of a section at full size, if possible, or put the shadow back in and make the mountains taller. I'm liking the previous one better, altho that's just my opinion.