November 2009 Entry - Qonworld

[Djekspek]

hehe, thanks for the heads-up latest WIP. details details... finally getting the hang of some of the techniques i'm using for this map. redid a load of stuff and added details... iso-structures still need tons of work tho ... and still need to get some technique for fire .. but 'll get there

[wormspeaker]

For the fire, you might just want to blur it a bit and add some glow.

[Steel General]

There are gobs of tutorials on the web for creating fire in Photoshop, a little Google-Fu will probably find you what you need.

[Djekspek]

thanks SG, found some fire-method that seems fitting. still need te work on integrating the fires into the map but they look much better now. furthermore been working on the iso's for the cities. Just hope I can finish this all in time as I already completely overspend the numer of hours I wanted to put in this

[Ascension]

I've spent so much time drooling over this that I just noticed that travel here is very tough. If one wanted to go from the little city on the edge by the kraken to the medium city west of there (both in the south) one has to take a boat up to the forest, beach the boat north of the chasm, cross the mountains, build a boat at the coast (there is no port on either side), sail around the elevated city, beach the new boat on the coast near the city with blue spires, trek the forest, cross the mountains, and come to a dead end as that chasm near the pink crystals has no bridge or anything. I hope there are flying ships or griffons or teleporters

My prodigality aside, it's a great work of art and when you get it done it goes straight to my Inspiration Folder.

[Djekspek]

travel...hmm.. well, since the continent almost broke in two, travel became difficult... still, there already was some floating island where people needed to travel. ah.. gonne add some zeppelins. thanks for the pointer Ascension

[Boethius61]

This is awesome!

[Djekspek]

thanks ... one more detailled pass done to smooth out oddities... harbor and zeppelins added so people can travel around now, more iso's done... one more city to go. also first labelling... probs needs smaller font and i do need to get a divine creative boost on the naming .. but cant really force that tho
###Latest WIP###

[Djekspek]

So... I guess this is the final version. Added one more ruined city and created a border using steampunk typography tutorial from photoshop magazine. I left the labelling as is though I'm not 100% satisfied with it. Must say I had a blast creating this (took me a big amount of time and without this guild I would never have finished it, so thanks all for the C&C!) ... and best of all I learned a lot of new techniques!

"Qonworld is a magical disc-shaped world floating in space (no, not on the back of a giant turtle. The world almost cracked in two due to a failed magical experiment. And of course, thousands of people died. The map is timed a few months after this cataclyms, now known as "the Great Evisceration". Although the great well still works providing the world with water, the world is now slowly drained from water..."

###Latest WIP###

[jfrazierjr]

What a lovely piece of work!!! I have been eagerly following the development of this piece since the first color version...

One major complaint and a few minor nibbles (which aren't even close to critical to "fix"). For me Worlds End is just way to minuscule. With the forced perspective, unless the town is populated by partial sized people, the town should be the same size or larger in terms of scale as the other cities.

I see in your latest round that the City formerly known as Qan's northern forest actually a cliff. This bugged my "a lot" before adding the forest as it did not appear to be a coastline and just the end of land and beginning of water. With the addition of the forest, it really helped ease the lack of transition, and with the broken warped city, it made me realize that that the peninsula is actually a cliff instead (see next minor quibble).

Lastly, I see you have a dark shadow on one of your air boats, but no other shadows anywhere... I would suggest either ditching that shadow OR adding a muted shadow in all the right places(SE of the large statue, SE of the formerly mentioned cliff face over the water, the three rocks, the sailing ships, etc)

Again, this is a tremendously lovely piece of work, and the only big thing for me is the scale of Worlds End. The rest are just minor embellishments "I" would make. Even still, I am fairly certain that this map will garner my vote in the challenge either way.