A project abandoned

[Diamond]

hi kelleri.

If this project is of a quality that you are willing to just abandon then i'm a little awestruck/intimidated by your standards. It is (was?) amazing! Awesome work and may it rest in peace.

^^ This. ^^

[Kellerica]

Thanks for the comments, everyone!

Hi Kelleri.

If this project is of a quality that you are willing to just abandon then i'm a little awestruck/intimidated by your standards. It is (was?) amazing! Awesome work and may it rest in peace.

Thank you! To be honest it's less about quality and more just about it being the wrong look for this particular project But I will have to own up to being pretty critical when it comes to own work...

Edit: Ninja'd by the Diamond Man! Hehe

[Ilanthar]

Kelleri, if you are letting down this to do a better one, PLEASE DO !!!
It's great, with your particular style for shapes and texture/color. The heraldry and mountains are also particularly excellent. How did you do those mountains, btw??

[Kellerica]

Kelleri, if you are letting down this to do a better one, PLEASE DO !!!
It's great, with your particular style for shapes and texture/color. The heraldry and mountains are also particularly excellent. How did you do those mountains, btw??

Heh, now look at the pressure you just put on me. Shame on you!

The mountains are a mess, to put it shortly. I started out with a base of relief style mountains made with a Bewel & Emboss layer style - the technique basicly straight out of Tear's Saderan tut even though I use custom made brushes to do it. After that I flattened the base, copied it and hit it with a couple of Photoshop premade filters. Poster Edges, Sponge, etc. until I got a look I liked. I added a light layer of hand-painted shadows and details on top of it all.

Sorry I don't have a better step-by-step for you, I kinda cooked it all up as I went along and don't even fully remember how I did it anymore...

[J.Edward]

I really like the treatment on the water.
I would be interested to hear anything more about that.
As always, the look and feel of this is very moody, which you do very well.

[Kellerica]

I really like the treatment on the water.
I would be interested to hear anything more about that.
As always, the look and feel of this is very moody, which you do very well.

Thanks, J.! I'm glad you like the water, that was pretty much my favorite thing about this too.

I think most of the credit really does go to the textures to be honest (I was using a couple from Shutterstock and one from the wonderful Coyotemax's Aged Paper pack). Here's a little crop to show you what it looked like without them:
SyrUnfinished Crop.jpg

What it basicly consists of:

The 'outer ring' around the coastline. That's a separate mask of it's own, placed under the main landmass' mask, and completed with a separate lineart layer (with a color overlay of a little brown hue in order to give it more of the 'burnt' look you see with the textures on it). The elements being separate in order to gain more control over them, as I've always found the look to be a little artificial when you just use an Outer Glow or something like that on the main landmass mask.

Underneath that, you have the wavelines, and I really took the easy way out with them. I worked around the coasts with a brush like this:
wavies.jpg
After that I just made a selection a little bit outside of the 'outer ring' and Feathered the hell out of it, and used that as a mask. It doesn't look that great now, but the texture helped to edges to burn in quite nicely.

The rhumb lines added to that (white base with a soft little white Outer Glow to give it a soft look) and that's pretty much all there is to it. The texture does the rest.

[GreatWhiteNorth]

I agree, it doesn't really evoke those feelings but I second Diamond, I hope you can repurpose this into a project where the awesome mountains, color scheme, and overall feel are what you're looking for. Nice work anyway!

[J.Edward]

Thanks, J.! I'm glad you like the water, that was pretty much my favorite thing about this too.

I think most of the credit really does go to the textures to be honest (I was using a couple from Shutterstock and one from the wonderful Coyotemax's Aged Paper pack). Here's a little crop to show you what it looked like without them:
SyrUnfinished Crop.jpg

What it basicly consists of:

The 'outer ring' around the coastline. That's a separate mask of it's own, placed under the main landmass' mask, and completed with a separate lineart layer (with a color overlay of a little brown hue in order to give it more of the 'burnt' look you see with the textures on it). The elements being separate in order to gain more control over them, as I've always found the look to be a little artificial when you just use an Outer Glow or something like that on the main landmass mask.

Underneath that, you have the wavelines, and I really took the easy way out with them. I worked around the coasts with a brush like this:
wavies.jpg
After that I just made a selection a little bit outside of the 'outer ring' and Feathered the hell out of it, and used that as a mask. It doesn't look that great now, but the texture helped to edges to burn in quite nicely.

The rhumb lines added to that (white base with a soft little white Outer Glow to give it a soft look) and that's pretty much all there is to it. The texture does the rest.

I'll have to try that for some coastlines sometime.
I really like how it looks. I always draw out all of the sort of wavy squiggles individually, which takes a while.
This seems like it is a far better way and, with the more wave-like shapes, looks very nice.
Don't sell yourself short... it's a great technique.

[Diamond]

I agree. I'm gonna have to steal that coastline technique...

[Modesthunk]

I really like the style of this. It's a shame it won't get finished!