Lands of Legend?

[damonjynx]

Hi Folks,

I'm happy with my progress creating dungeon maps and so on but it's time to move onto bigger things. My intention is to create an OGL setting for the Legend game (formerly known as MRQII (Runequest)) by Mongoose Publishing.

So I drew up a rough sketch, scanned it, traced the line work etc and this is where I'm at at the moment, just ocean and landmasses.

I will need a lot of advice, help and other suggestions as well as PS tips and tricks to make this a good map. I'm using Photoshop CS4.

### Latest WIP ###
Legendary Lands1.jpg

[Rongar]

Well, you're of to a good start! The coastline looks believable. I have no clue about photoshop, so I can't help you with that, sorry. What I can say, though, is that the linework may be a tad too thick, but it's probably too early to tell. The same goes for a problem I could possibly see you running into, which is that all the corners are filled with landmass to map out, so there isn't much room for a map legend. Unless you

a) don't want a legend, or
b) leave one of the corners largely "unmapped", so to speak.

Or you could, and this is just an idea, put a possible legend in a corner and then draw a larger forest around it. I think that would look pretty cool, like it's really embedded in the map. Not all maps need a legend though. A scale would be nice, but that fits almost anywhere. And if your border includes these black and white, uh, scale lines (I don't recall the right word, it looks like a cut out checkerboard), that would be helpful to measure distances.

That's just general advice, though, and it's all I've got for now. May the photoshoppers take over from here.


Regards,

~~Rongar

[damonjynx]

Thanks Rongar. I'll keep that in mind. I thought the line work was a little thick as well. I'll have to check it ar print resolution before I get too carried away.

[damonjynx]

Not any progress but I thought it would be a good idea to, at various stages, show a screenshot of how my PS file is structured et al, so this thread acts like a bit of a tutorial as well as allowing people to comment on stuff I'm doing right and stuff I could do better. Obviously, if you can see the structure/details/settings of what I'm doing it'll make it much easier to provide advice.

The brush I used for the landmass was a hard edge 5px brush. Image size is 26.52x18.96 cm @ 100px/cm or just under 10.5x7.5 inches at 254px/inch.

Cheers,
Legendary Lands SS1.jpg

[Ilanthar]

I agree with Rongar about the thickness of your coastline. It's looking good but it's gonna make very hard to draw small elements with precision (like forests or hills) if you keep this thickness. And It may look weird if you use 2 or 3 very different pencils.
Is it on a separate layer? If so, you may be able to apply an effect to drop the thickness impression.

[damonjynx]

@Ilanthar, Rognar; The linework is on a separate layer, I'm not sure about the best way to do this but I'm thinking if I select either the land or ocean and then stroke the selection on a separate layer with a smaller brush? I'll have to double check the actual brush size I used, it seems thick for 5px...

[damonjynx]

Just a quick update. I've created layers for mountains, forests and cities as placeholders for the real deal, i.e. when I figure out how I want to do them! I also thinned out the coast line line work.

Comments and suggestion welcome!

Legendary Lands 2.jpg

[Rongar]

Yup, coastline looks much better now.

By the way, nice idea to do a tut/ journal. I might learn a thing or two about PS without even working with it.

[Ilanthar]

By Rongar
Yup, coastline looks much better now.

+1 . What style are you going for, btw?

[damonjynx]

+1 . What style are you going for, btw?

No idea at the moment Ilanther re style. I'll experiment with some different idea's. I like Rognar's style in his challenge entry, though I've no idea about how to re-create it!