This is a fantastic piece of work. The historical details of the old fortifications give the location a lived in feel, it really makes this map piece come alive.
Progress !
So, I tried fixing the weirdness of the castle's southern cliff, I added a small step and moved/tweaked a few buildings, let me know if it looks better.
Apart from that, I've finally added the various villages and buildings scattered around the land, I might still add a few vague blobs here and there for small "place of interests" such as camps or weird looking stones, but I think it's best to leave that to the small numbers and labelled legend i'll add later.
Small tweaks on shadows, forests, water, ...
Next up, the farms and fields. I'm gonna have to try to find a good looking method to make them look more detailed without the map becoming too crowded (I can't add stone walls and trees on every farm border, i have to give that impression without overloading it).
Once that's over, i'll go around adding little bushes, details and little things like that to make sure, then i'll add a paper border, tweak the overall texturing (there's already a soft paper texture), add numbers, legend, labels, blablabla.
So, pretty close to finished with this, last stretch of real work before the final detailing.
WIP_15.jpg
As always, thanks for the support and tell me what you think.
EDIT :
A few things were off, a texture not visible, etc.. here's a tweaked version.
WIP_15b.jpg
Last edited by Narolas; 08-13-2015 at 01:13 PM.
This is a fantastic piece of work. The historical details of the old fortifications give the location a lived in feel, it really makes this map piece come alive.
Alright, did a small test on a farm area, and it's worked pretty well !
So, i'll probably tweak it later, add some rocks or replace the stone coloured walls by some brown to suggest wooden parts, remove some trees (there's a bit too many), but for now i'm quite happy with it.
Now i just have to reproduce that on all the different type of farms and add some little details here and there.
As always, tweaked a few things (textures, shadows, etc), feedback appreciated!
WIP_16.jpg
You should be happy with the farms, they are awesome. Love the broken wall in places and all the details, very nice. What are the small items, some red, just above the castle? Your cliff lines are really clean, how do you draw them? at 100% scale, what pixel size? Do you use the pencil or brush tool, just asking I'm really struggling with my linework, doesn't come close to yours.
Can only agree with snodsy. The fields look damn good! It's a pleasure to see this map of yours develop.
Last edited by Abu Lafia; 08-19-2015 at 07:14 PM. Reason: typo
Thanks guys
The small multi-coloured shapes north of the castle are market stalls, it should be clear when the legend and labels are added to the map.
About the linework, I should say first that I use photoshop and the amazing Inking brush tools from frenden (I recommend this specific pack, but all the others are great!).
For most of my lines, I use the "nib" brush (from frenden) at size 5, and with my pressure sensitive tablet I can get some really smooth lines even at small sizes.
The result is that the average cliff line is about 2 or 2.5 pixels across if you count the low-opacity edges.
here's a screenshot :
Untitled-1.jpg
This is pretty cool. I must say however it's odd that the lines look like they were done in paint as opposed to PS as they are all jaggy. (not referring to the most recent zoomed in image)
Last edited by Sarithus; 08-19-2015 at 08:01 PM.
That's what every line looks like in PS when zoomed in this close, it's all pixels.
If you mean from the map (which is probably what you meant ), Then i'm not sure which one you mean, the stone farm borders maybe ? I used a kind noisy effect on them to give the impression of small bits of stones, but it might be too much, i could tone it down.
Last edited by Narolas; 08-19-2015 at 08:04 PM.
You beat my edit.
I was referring to the ones above that zoomed in image.
I picked out a few places that stand out, and I hope this doesn't come across as rude or like I'm calling the map bad, but the jagged effect is on pretty much every line there is. Perhaps it's something to do with the way you save the file. I mean, it's not a big deal, but to me the effect looks similar to what you'd find in paint.
Untitled.jpg
Untitled.png
Last edited by Sarithus; 08-19-2015 at 08:13 PM.
You beat my edit too ! Then do you mean the stone walls (grey lines) ? If yes, then yea i'll play around with the texture and noise effect on that layer and see if it can be less jaggy.