Man, I can't believe I haven't posted in this thread yet! Looked and drooled at it quite often already! Really great stuff!
What happened in the Silent Forest that cost Govoya her crew!?? I'm very curious.
Man, I can't believe I haven't posted in this thread yet! Looked and drooled at it quite often already! Really great stuff!
I've just signed up here, so it's probably totally uncool to actually *criticise* anyone's work. Is it uncool? Will you totally hate me? In the hopes that my criticism might actually be useful, I'll give it a shot…
Firstly, I *love* this map. The idea, the line quality, the 3Dishness, all of it rocks. Totally. Except the shading. Actually, that's not even right, I love the shading too. Mostly.
The only place I'd really think about again is the shading in the "void", i.e. the whole purplish background of the left side of the map. The colour's fine, but the feeling of shadow around the spit of land gives the void a flat feeling, as if it is a plain that the land is casting a shadow on. I'm assuming the concept is actually that it's just void, a bg open nothingness that the land juts out into, but the gradient from darker near the land out to lighter further away flattens the space out completely.
Just as a little thing to try which might give the void a voidier feeling: give the whole background a gradient from lighter purple at the top to darker at the bottom, and no shading that follows the "coastline" at all.
Like I said above, I really love this extremely original and creative and beautifully drawn map. Which is why the void shading makes me itch. If you can see what I mean, maybe try what I said and see what it does. And keep up the awesome work!
Criticism is always welcome. I need all the help I can get. Your advice is excellent as well. That said I probably won't revisit this one as its been a bit, but I'll get some mileage out of your insight all the same. I don't utilize large scale gradients enough and its something that can really help with depth. Thanks!