X Marks the Spot

[philipstephen]

This may be a finished map, but i will wait for a few comments and critiques before putting it in that section.

It started as an exercise in the Saderan Tutorial by Tear. I love his maps, and thought it would be a great style to emulate and learn from.

But when I realized my photoshop elements 2.0 could not do all the steps, I just made a sudden departure and starting making my own stuff up with a bunch of layers, textures, and objects.

This is the result.

Maybe it needs some more work. Maybe not.

What do you think?

phil.

[Steel General]

The green is a bit 'neon' for my tastes but other than that I like it.

[Ascension]

I like it except for the bright red blood, maybe something darker.

[philipstephen]

Here is a slightly different version.

I tried to bring up the mountains a bit more, played with colours, and added a blood splot.

Not sure which is better.

This one is bigger to see detail better.

[philipstephen]

You replied so fast I still had the file open.

For your viewing pleasure, here are darker blood spats and subdued greens!

Does it look better?

Phil

[Gandwarf]

The last version is pretty cool I think. The green isn't neon anymore and the blood looks realistic. Very nice. I would expect to see a map like this in a loading screen for a computer game.

[Ramah]

I spent about 10 minutes looking for the X.
I knew the blood was somehow involved but it tool me ages to see an X in it. /facepalm

Anyhoos, I really like it. I didn't mind the neon green really, but I do think it looks better now that it's been tamed.

What I would like to know most though is where did you get that dagger and that compass? Did you draw them yourselves? I never know where people on this forum get all the cool stuff they put in their maps.

Edit: Oh... and as I've worked through Tear's tut myself, I do wonder what stages you were unable to complete on Elements. What does Elements lack over the main program?

[philipstephen]

Thanks for the compliments and feedback everyone! I think I can call this map done. (unless i add ports and icons and villages and the like)

in response to Ramah, i grabbed some images from google search and tweaked them with a cutout layer so that they were not too realistic...

i am not sure if that is copyright infringement or up there with collage artists using magazine clippings... i hope it is the latter.

For the tutorial, I lost it around step 3 - land. I did not seem to have the same Pattern Overlay buttons or control over bevels to the same degree. Maybe it is just organized different and I got lazy in my search to find the equivalents.



Phil

[Juggernaut1981]

something about the sword's lighting looks off.

[Ascension]

I didn't even think about it but now that I look closer, the compass has a light from top right but the drop shadows come from top left. The lighting on the dagger looks, to me, to come from bottom right. So hard to composite external elements into an image. The map is cool, though.