I know.. I've been looking at that too. In a little bit ill fix it.
Great stuff EE but the glows on some of the text looks kinda tan and doesn't match the paper.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
I know.. I've been looking at that too. In a little bit ill fix it.
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Calculating rep is sort of like calculating the national debt in trillions of dollars - at some point it's just sacrificing chickens and hocus pocus.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
Intel, same thing.
How about 'it took me weeks to conduct the surveys just for this area.' - I'm thinking 'knowledge' is too long for the line space, just as information and intelligence are too long. I see the issue. Don't change it if it works for you, I'm just seeing a nice flavor in the way the narrator is speaking/writing. Using 'info', 'intel' or even 'data' is just too modern to fit your theme. Very nitpicky, I know - it just jumps out at me.
Otherwise great map!
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Artstation Gallery - Maps and 3D illustrations
### Winner ###
Challenge.jpg
Added a few things.. Changed colors.. Blah blah.
Last edited by ChickPea; 08-26-2018 at 09:50 AM. Reason: Added Winner tag
I see you're using photoshop - if it helps any, what I usually do for the text to avoid the glow looking like a glow is to use a mask - masks are your friend!! (on my latest project I don't think I have ANY layers or groups that don't use a mask)
Take all your mappy bits, anything that's going to be under the text, and group it. make sure your text layers are above this group (I usually end up with 2 groups that subdivide.. Text, and Map) Put a mask on the map elements group, and then use a soft brush (or jagged, or both) to mask out the areas that are behind the text. That way instead of having a glow that doesn't always match the paper, it looks more like the areas around the text are either erased so the writing can be placed , or drawn around the text.
Using a soft brush with either a medium grey or black with low flow/opacity setting makes the drawing look faded and erased so the text could be placed after the drawing was made. Use a hard brush with full opacity and flow to mask out the areas of text if the text was there first and the drawing placed afterward.
If that's confusing let me know.
My finished maps
"...sometimes the most efficient way to make something look drawn by hand is to simply draw it by hand..."
Thanks Coyo (hope you don't mind if I call you that.)
I don't dabble in masks that much I need to get used to using them though.. They can be helpful when doing a destructive technique..
What I did to fade out was to select the text layers and just make it a work path and select a soft edge brush 50 opacity 75 flow and just stroke path with brush once and then increase to a larger size and stroke path with brush again.
And, no, I easily got lost back when I was just starting using Photoshop. Not anymore!
doublepost! you posted an update while I was typing my last one out Awesome work, it's looking more natural.
Another thought occured to me, in an earlier version of the map, you had your writing kind of all over the place, and then you tightened it up so it's all straight lines. I'm guessing you were going for the "this all got handwritten out by someone in a hurry so they didn't have the time to write in nice neat paragraphs"..
I've got a rather time consuming method that works wonderfully - I've used it on a few maps (mostly the Gromet and Friends maps for the Passage of Time and Trade challenges).
Once I had all my text placed out the way I wanted it, I went nuts with the pen tool, drawing out a separate line for each line of text that was being placed. I then tweaked each of the lines so they had a few small bends, changes to angles, and in some cases even picked out a few bits where I widened the text or shrunk it ever so slightly. That gave it a more organic feel, but if you do that be careful, people typically have a tendency to write in relatively neat lines but a few subtle variations can make it look very natural and handwritten.
Of course the ultimate way of doing that is to actually write the text out yourself on a piece of paper, scan it, and add as a layer overtop set to multiply
If you do that, run your text layers out on a printer, that makes an excellent guide for writing by hand, then run it through the masking process above.
This all assumes you have a scanner, printer, and the time to do it (or a bit of affinity with the pen tool, and lots more time)
My finished maps
"...sometimes the most efficient way to make something look drawn by hand is to simply draw it by hand..."