Unnamed WIP

[Sendrith]

Hey there,

I'm new here and just getting started on doing maps digitally. This is how I want my mountains to look


How did you achieve the folded-paper look?

[Eilathen]

My favourite critic! For someone who doesn’t make maps you usually know what’s up, and I’m well aware of how picky you can be, so this comment made me feel better about things, I always appreciate you’re feed back. Getting the rest of the mountains in, shading, and rounding them out like you said will definitely take some time, it will probably be a month before I can post another update, so until then...

Thanks for the kind words. I normally have an opinion on everything It just sometimes seems that people take "critic" from someone who does not do many maps not as serious. So i'm glad you find my inputs helpful or even just motivating/useful .
Funnily enough i do have a degree in geography so i do know some stuff but it is true, i am not that active as a mapper myself (or not anymore...when i was younger i doodled a lot of maps on paper ^^ ).
Anyway, i'm rambling.

As to the scale of your map...considering how big the mountain-chains are in relation to the landmasses i'd say this is at least a bigger regional map. So i'd say we easily see several hundred kilometers in this map. But that's just me I'm a sucker for bigger maps. My favorite map-type is continental or even world scale.

Keep going, kacey! You have another very interesting project going here. I am really curious to see where you take it!

[nothingbutblue]

I just love the composition and shapes in this map. So delicious and tangible. Update, update please!

[kacey]

Hey there,

I'm new here and just getting started on doing maps digitally. This is how I want my mountains to look


How did you achieve the folded-paper look?

Hi Sendrith, achieving the folded paper look is very easy, all you have to do is add a paper texture as you're back round. For this one I used three of coyotemax's textures together, and changed the colours a bit. You can find them here http://coyotemax.deviantart.com/gall...9830/Resources and each one you download has several in the file. Another paper texture that I like to use allot that has really nice folds is here http://bashcorpo.deviantart.com/art/...v-15-470628155

And for the mountains I've been trying to use some of the techniques set out by Jonathan Roberts, he has several tutorials that are really great on his web site http://www.fantasticmaps.com/ I would recommend going through his site with a fine tooth comb, so many gems to find there.

To get the texture to show through the water, you can use the multiply blend mode, but lately I've had allot of luck using linear burn, a blend mode I only just recently discovered was useful in PhotoShop.

[kacey]

Thanks for the kind words. I normally have an opinion on everything It just sometimes seems that people take "critic" from someone who does not do many maps not as serious. So i'm glad you find my inputs helpful or even just motivating/useful .
Funnily enough i do have a degree in geography so i do know some stuff but it is true, i am not that active as a mapper myself (or not anymore...when i was younger i doodled a lot of maps on paper ^^ ).
Anyway, i'm rambling.

As to the scale of your map...considering how big the mountain-chains are in relation to the landmasses i'd say this is at least a bigger regional map. So i'd say we easily see several hundred kilometers in this map. But that's just me I'm a sucker for bigger maps. My favorite map-type is continental or even world scale.

Keep going, kacey! You have another very interesting project going here. I am really curious to see where you take it!

No problem Eilathen, you have been very useful in improving my skills since I joined the forum. I heard once somewhere that some of the best critics are not artists, and tho this isn’t true of you, you’re not accustom to using tools like photoshop, and gimp. I find sometimes that artists realizing how difficult it is to achieve certain looks will give positive comments even tho it doesn’t look that good. I haven’t read all you’re posts on the forum, but from what I’ve seen you never give praise for something that is down right ugly...This gives me comfort, you always give me a heads up when something I’m doing doesn’t look quite right.

I’m a fan of bigger maps as well, and I want to have at least a few different climate areas here, I just don’t know yet where the equator is in relation to this land mass....Do I want to have the equator even on this map, giving me allot of tropical area, or do I want the equator to be below this area, giving me something more like the east coast of Canada or the US, or do I want to have the equator in the bottom half giving me some sub tropic climates, and areas like china, and India. I even thought about flipping the map horizontally so I could get a Mediterranean climate somewhere on the map. Is this in the norther hemisphere, or the Southern...I really don’t know.

I do know that I want to have maybe a smallish desert region, but it’s not a must, and definitely some cold steppe, but not tundra, and I don’t want to draw any pine trees, so my limit for north, and south will be around 45 to 50 degrees. I don’t mind having some mixed forest, but the style of trees I’ll be going for is completely new to me so I’d like to keep it simple.

Anyway...If anyone read all of that I’ll be shocked, sorry for the long post. I’ll think about the climate later, right now I still have allot of work to do on these outlines. If you have any ideas on climate feel free to share, I’m pretty undecided right now so I can use all the help I can get.

Sometimes I wish I had someone else to do all the planning stages, give me a rough coast, decide where the mountains, and forests will be, and make up all the names, then all I would have to do is draw it up. I always find making the initial decisions difficult.

[kacey]

I just love the composition and shapes in this map. So delicious and tangible. Update, update please!

Thanks for the nice comment nothingbutblue, I'm happy you're interested in my project. I'll try to post an update in the next few day's.

[kacey]

I changed the coast, something just wasn’t working for me, I’ll probably reuse it at a later time. I also changed the colour of the background texture, it was a little too yellow before, it might still be I don’t know, and I changed the water colour too, it’s not set in stone yet.

I shuffled some mountains, and copy, and pasted a few of them...I’m seriously sick of drawing mountains right now. I also started adding some very early planning stages on the trees, allot to do yet. I still have some work to do on the coast, It needs some more islands, and it’s definitely lacking some lakes. Outlines still have to be done for hills, and more terrain features.

I've never really used the clouds method to do my coasts before, but it's looking a little pixilated when I stroke it, I may have to go over it by hand.

I’m going to start shading some mountains right after I post this...Wish me luck.

New coast work WIP.jpg

[Mouse]

Goodness! I turn my back a couple of days and suddenly everything is mirror view! LOL!

I'm only here for about 5 minutes before paying Christmas calls on family, so I may miss something and come back to it later.

The colours weren't really bothering me too much at such an early stage of the drawing, but I think you were right to reduce the yellow in the land. I like the new forests... but I see you have lost the rather nice cliff shading along the coast that you had in the first drawing.

I'll have a closer look later

[kacey]

Goodness! I turn my back a couple of days and suddenly everything is mirror view! LOL!

I'm only here for about 5 minutes before paying Christmas calls on family, so I may miss something and come back to it later.

The colours weren't really bothering me too much at such an early stage of the drawing, but I think you were right to reduce the yellow in the land. I like the new forests... but I see you have lost the rather nice cliff shading along the coast that you had in the first drawing.

I'll have a closer look later

Thanks Mouse, I will definitely be putting the coast shading back in, and hopefully I'll do a better job of it second time around, I'll also be adding back in the waves around the coast, I just haven't got there yet, beleive it or not I've put about six to eight more hours into this from my last update... I'm pretty slow at this still.

[Voolf]

Kacey your mountains linework is quite good, i like it. I bet you spend a lot of time drawing them and i understand completaly "sick of drawing them" feeling. There are times when i have to do 1-2 days break to clear my mind. I can tell you that the more you draw and experiment with lines the more you "feel" where you should draw next stroke.

As an advice for making your moutains better, it is good to look at ski maps at google. They are usually simple one colour perspective maps depicting close up mountains with a blue shade. Just grab some look at them and try to draw the same thing (lines and then shade)