The Isles of Soquakask
After fiddling around with my first map a while, trying to improve it and turning it into a nasty mish-mash of different styles on several occasions, I decided I should move on to something else to try some different techniques.
I named the area The Isles of Soquakask purely for the sake of naming the area.
At the moment, I am uncertain about my rivers. I just can't seem to get them to look as if they're not just blue squigglies lying on top of the map. Additionally, I haven't added any forests yet, I still need to decide what technique to use. Given the style of the map, I should probably visit Google Maps and have a good look at the satelite images.
Of course, any and all comments, suggestions and criticism are welcome.
EDIT: Credit to Pasis for the water texture from his Rising up the mountains in Photoshop tutorial.
This is looking pretty nice so far.
Rivers are for me one of the toughest things to add, so I usually have as few as possible. You can try adding a slight bevel to your river lines and change the shadowing to a more brownish color to help delineate the river banks.
There are a couple of tutorials on doing rivers, though I'll take the plunge and say you've probably at least looked at them.
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The water texture is originally from Spiralgraphics and not my creation, so I cannot take the credits
It is? I didn't recognize it - I use those textures a lot, which one is it?Originally Posted by pasis
The water texture is originally from Spiralgraphics and not my creation, so I cannot take the credits
My Finished Maps | My Challenge Maps | Still poking around occasionally...
Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Following up on SG's response, here is an example of a slight emboss on the S river.
It is subtle, but it makes a fair difference.
-Rob A>
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It's called Azure Waters. I used that in my tutorial and in the Curunir WIP I'm working on. In my maps I just changed hue/saturation and added clouds to get rid of some repeating feeling.
It seems that Flateroctomy had done some modifications as well and the outcome on the water is nice.
Thanks...I have used that one but as I said I didn't recognize it.
My Finished Maps | My Challenge Maps | Still poking around occasionally...
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I like this, looks very tropical and colorful. I like the terrain too. You won't get much out of the satellites for help on rivers so I suggest a few things:
1. Take a soft brush and paint in some river valleys/lowlands.
2. Put a layer of 50% gray between the land and river layers, set it to overlay, and use the burn tool to paint some valleys in.
3. Easiest but crappiest way is to add an outer glow of dark green.
4. Add some variation to the river line thickness by going back over places like bends and deltas (which I can see you already have some wider deltas).
5. You can always add a down-bevel to make it look lower, I've gotten mixed results.
6. Lastly, add a slight blur to soften the edges.
Anywho, looks real nice and nearly done, label this bad boy up.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
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I have tried countless variations of bevels, but never found one that worked for me (usually, if you look away and then look back, you can imagine the bevel inverted, and it looks like the river is actually raised).
However, I tried again and using a soft brown stroke, some new bevelling and a couple of the hand-painted valley shadows that Ascension suggested I came up with the map attached below.
I also convinced a concrete texture I made before to pretend to be a forest texture, and started on a couple of tree-filled areas.
My water exists of a rendered clouds layer (blend mode normal) with moderately decreased contrast and a subtle cracked soil pattern overlay (50% opacity), and on top of that a layer (blend mode overlay) filled with an even blue with the water texture pattern overlay (50% opacity).
I think the rivers are looking good now - nice job.
My Finished Maps | My Challenge Maps | Still poking around occasionally...
Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
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