Ilanthar's tests & sketches

[Simkin]

As already said, those are really impressive pieces of illustration

[Ilanthar]

By - JO -
Wow... amazing progress in 7 years!
And I'll say it again, I'm so jealous of your ability to draw so well anything other than coastlines, mountains and forests!
It opens up so many possibilities for embellishing maps and giving them a story and a colour!
I'd love to have the time to learn this skill!

Thanks a lot Joël ! Well, Iearnt a few things here and there along the way, but yeah, I really enjoy doing classical line drawing. And it surely requires time...

By Voolf
Wow, those illustrations are top-notch!

Thank you very much Rafal !

By Simkin
As already said, those are really impressive pieces of illustration

Thanks Simkin ! I may try to color them later.

Drawings are mostly done. And I wanted to show you the current advance on the whole map (it's at 66%)
Agartha neoWIP 2T.jpg

[- JO -]

It's going well !!! Looking forward to see what's next !

[Ilanthar]

By - JO -
It's going well !!! Looking forward to see what's next !

Thanks. Well, just a little more.

I'm hesitant about what to do with the big cities. And I'll need to think about what to place around (apart from the beasties and title), for sure.
Agartha neoWIP 2T.jpg

[KMAlexander]

You not sold on the icon style?

[Ilanthar]

By KMAlexander
You not sold on the icon style?

Well, the small repetitive icons I'm using for the small places are OK I guess (more like pixel art at this size). Bu the big cities are another story because I want to express their diversities & prominent feature(s), hence the choice of just a portion or main buildings of it. Yet, that means doing them differently from the other icons AND hiding what's stands behind the city (coastlines, rivers, etc.).
Example on the city of Halieuse (that I've redone precisely because the first one was just quite a mess).
I really don't know what's best and I can't see another solution .

Agartha neoWIPEx.jpg

[- JO -]

I'm really looking forward to see what solution you find... I find myself with the same kind of trouble... I draw "vignette" with a view from the city, but it really was "pixel art" and it's not looking good...

[KMAlexander]

You can see the full map here: https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/ser...48083~90115541

[KMAlexander]

Hmmmmm, what if you did something like Thomas Packer's approach?

Packer.png

Obviously, some of the details got lost in the printing quality of the time. But this let him show a city's personality but also keep the landscape details.

[Ilanthar]

By - JO -
I'm really looking forward to see what solution you find... I find myself with the same kind of trouble... I draw "vignette" with a view from the city, but it really was "pixel art" and it's not looking good...

I did no much more (either on the map or testing solutions). But I might finish doing things simple.

By KMAlexander
Hmmmmm, what if you did something like Thomas Packer's approach?

Thanks for the resource and idea. Not sure it can fit though. I adopted a tricky perspective more top-down than this one. Hence, my cities in the back (or in the north) could be done like that, but those in the south are more close to a top-down view...