Last Torch Maps: A Golem in the Sand

[Meshon]

Threw some sand on there. The first go the sand was too sharp. It's still kind of isolated ridges, rather than an undulating field, but I'm prepared to let it go. I struggled with putting footprints on for awhile and then dropped that endeavour. I'm not sure exactly how to do them so that they look good but I'm not drawing a thousand individual footprints. Anyway, here's where I'm at. It's possible this is as finished as I want to be. There's lots more that could be done, but I'm not sure I'm up to it just now. Besides, I still want to enter the lite challenge!
GolemInTheSand.jpg

cheers,
Meshon

[Abu Lafia]

Hey Meshon, seems like your research on "sand behaviour" paid off . This looks amazing!

[Chick]

Yes! That looks really good! I'd say throw a little bit more sand on the edge of the bottommost one, just to kill the visible edge a bit.

I'd sure love a tutorial on how you did the sand ridges!!

[Meshon]

Thanks! The sand was a learning process. I realize now that the ridges probably shouldn't have so much flat ground between them; when the downslope ends, the next upslope should begin. Thanks for the catch on that bottom corner. The original file has a crop area around the edges and when I was painting in the sand I was zoomed way in and just thought most of that would be cropped. I need to step back for the big picture more often!

There's nothing too special about how I did the sand ridges for this map, just lots of brush strokes. With a dark brown, I started tracing the length of where I wanted a ridge to go with a thin line brush at 10% opacity. For this map it was 10px, but the final image size is 6900x5100 pixels, so you would adjust accordingly. I switched the brush down to 5%, which takes longer but I'm not confident enough yet to go higher. Then I continued tracing the ridge line on the shadow side. Each time I traced the line again I drew a slightly shorter stroke and increased the brush size a step or two. Once I had good coverage I did the same thing in reverse for the highlights with an almost-white colour. I think if I had made the the ridges wider I could have stopped there, but it really looked like someone had come along and poured sand in little rows on the ground, so I blurred the lot.

Here's where the map is now, with a little extra sand.
GolemInTheSand.jpg
You know, that explanation of the sand ridge was lacking something. A picture! I'll be back in a few minutes with that

cheers,
Meshon

[Meshon]

Here's just some pictures of the process. I think I may have missed a couple between 5 and 6. I actually really like how it looks _without_ the blur but it didn't work for the sand map so I blurred it to cover mistakes
SandTut.jpg

Let me know if that helps, or if you have any other questions about what I did.

cheers,
Meshon

[Chick]

Are my eyes deceiving me? You said you started with drawing the ridge line, but in this beautiful example, it looks like the initial lines turned into the troughs. And the step from 8 to 9 -- is that just blurring, or did you remove the original line?

[Meshon]

Are my eyes deceiving me? You said you started with drawing the ridge line, but in this beautiful example, it looks like the initial lines turned into the troughs. And the step from 8 to 9 -- is that just blurring, or did you remove the original line?

Sorry for taking ages to reply. I see what you mean. I think because I placed the starting lines closer together it ends up with an indeterminate elevation. If I squint hard I can switch it back and forth.

I'm pretty sure step 9 is just blurring. I think I actually like it better without the blur, but sometimes softer helps.

cheers
Meshon