The Isles

[Coyotemax]

yes, i'll be doing a new set of lines tonight (blast my day job! i wanna stay home and work on this!), just got some feedback from the client so i'm making a few changes and going ahead with others. I'll document/screenshot my process as i go for posterity.

Speaking of the client, I got confirmation in regards to releasing details about the project and the associated movie/series and will update accordingly when i get home. I've already gone back to update the first post with the movie website and facebook group.

[Coyotemax]

Ok, so i've scrapped the previous mountains - it was going to be more work to move the existing ones than simply redrawing with the new layout.

We'll have several islands devoted to specific terrain types, I'll be desertifying one, the 2 in the middle will be more mountainous with one being volcanic. I'm leaving plenty of open space on one for the wide rolling plains, and so on I've been spending a lot of time soaking up the information in the project bible to make sure I don't go off track.

i think what I'll do is use the basic outline layers like I have for the mountains here, and split off in 2 directions from here once i have forests and specific terrain added.. one version will be primarily linework and will be the functional version (rhumb lines etc, thinking sea chart and maybe even depth markers) with a simple border, and the other will be more painterly and artistic oriented - that one will get the super ornate border.

I've been alternating between the parchment background and straight white as the final version will be printed onto a textured/coloured surface.

I left the wavy water lines in there for now, i love the way this looks. I took screenshots as i went, I'll set up a tutorial thread somewhere when i get around to writing it up.

[moutarde]

The mountains are great! Very simple, and just plain nice to look at Also a really nice touch having the mountains sticking out up over the coastlines.

[Ramah]

Yeah, those wavy sea lines look great. Looking forward to seeing your tutorial.

[Diamond]

I love this piece. So clean and awesome looking.

[arsheesh]

Ooh, very nice CM! I also really like the ornate border.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Coyotemax]

Thanks! I'ts just a placeholder for the moment, but I may leave it as is for the functional version (just enough to prettify but not enough to distract).

FINALLY got the trees to do what I want them to, created a bunch of new custom brushes for the conifers and deciduous..

This is me testing out Evergreen Isle (working name, unlikely to be the final name for it, heh)
I was originally working on the linework detail layers for the mountains (typically 5 layers all said and done), but the more comments I got and the more i looked at them, the more I liked the mountains as they are. They really did come out kind of elegant.

[edit - oh yeah, the tutorial.. desktop crashed - mouse and keyboard stopped responding no matter what I do, so i can't access the file with all the screenshots, I'll try to remember to do a writeup shortly. RIght now I've been putting all my spare time and attention into the map.]

[Coyotemax]

Took a bit of a break to start working on the border and artwork of the pretty version.

Now I have to come up with constellations for each of those boxes! In one of the bottom corners I plan on having a globe of the night sky with the constellations depicted in place. I figure major constellations along the top and bottom (The Celestials, important to the mythology of this world) and then sub-constellations for the sides (Turtle, Salmon, Oak, etc).

There's 2 moons for this world, so that made the top corners easy to do, it's now a matter of figuring out how much detail I want to use - something painterly like it is with shading and colours, or start drawing in actual detail.

I have the weekend off while the wife is at work so i expect to get a fair amount of work done in one shot.. yay for lack of interruptions!

(shrunk to 50%)

[arsheesh]

Ooh, me likes! I'm excited to see how you develop the constellations, this promises to be a very nice piece.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Coyotemax]

Dunno.. my linework sucks I'm going to need to really work on that for the constellation detail work. I did up a quick and dirty version in the top left rectangular one.