May/June 2016 Lite Challenge: Orihlam

[ChickPea]

That tower... it's fantastic!! This is looking amazing so far. And happy new pen! Good to know the On the Map interviews are inspiring people.

[jshoer]

Thank you everyone!

Here's the latest. I think the major elements are done:
### Latest WIP ###
IMG_5000.JPG

I'm thinking about:
- What, if anything, to put in the zigzags on the border
- Whether the forests need any more texture or shading
- Whether to do any linework inside the lakes
- Whether to extend map features all the way to the tower illustration (with the tower in front of them)

I'm planning to erase the crown above the capital when I put the labels on...I don't like that so much.

[jshoer]

Decided to extend terrain features over to the tower. I also thought I'd see how it would a scan of this looked. I put a 1px Gaussian blur on it to soften the hard edges a little:

### Latest WIP ###
scan.jpg

The forests still seem like they need some more texture. What do you think?

[Bogie]

The forests look good now, but a little more texture wouldn't hurt.

[Robulous]

Love your tower, reminds me of The Dark Crystal!

[jshoer]

I was gonna name it "The Augur's Tower."

[foremost]

I always find it hard to keep track of where things are on a detailed black/white line map like this one. It's really rough when part of the map is ocean and part of the map is land, but I guess this map is all land so you don't have to worry about that. Are you planning to colorize this? If not, I would go hard on shading and textures to try and make things stand out.

It's looking really good, though.

[snodsy]

The forests still seem like they need some more texture. What do you think?

I think the forest textures currently work fine, too much would be out of place with the rest. One note on drawing these forest and other elements in perspective, when the element is more horizontal it looks better for the perspective --- notice the forest behind the circle mountains look really nice, while the ones above which are more vertical don't seem to recede into perspective enough, just a thought, beautiful line work, love the tower.

[jshoer]

Yeah, I know what you mean, Snodsy. The forests towards the top of this map have more N-S extent, so they end up seeming topheavy. Maybe I can play with adding hatches for internal shading or something to make them pop out more.

Foremost, no, I'm not going to color it. I want it to look like it goes in the front of a paperback. I can probably make the field marks \|/ more dense for you.

[Greg]

Beautiful work here jshoer! The tower looks great and I love the way the mountains stand out with their thick outlines. I'm not a huge fan of your forest style, I have to admit, but I think it's because they seem slightly more cartoony than the rest. That being said, your linework is as always superbly done and I'm always deeply envious of your ability to be so consistent and neat in your ink-drawn pieces.

Also, the large, solid border encloses the map nicley and sits well with the tower! Looking forwards to the next update.