Reply With QuoteThe coast seems very 'smooth' (but maybe that's intentional?), other than that looks good so far.
The Darklands
Working on another project, yay!
Going back to my roots for this one, the good old antique hand-drawn style. I'm still deciding on how to represent the mountains, forests, and other terrains - so far I haven't been happy with my sketching results. They just don't give the right feel yet. I don't have any terrain on the map yet since I'm waiting on geographical details, but that didn't stop me from getting the basic layout
This world is a very dark one, so instead of going for the soft and light colours I'd originally started with, I let the saturation creep back in. I plan on doing the terrain and labelling in a style similar to what I've done around the borders. This way it will also be consistent with the other artwork in the project.
I'm especially happy with the way the oceans turned out!
My finished maps
"...sometimes the most efficient way to make something look drawn by hand is to simply draw it by hand..."
The coast seems very 'smooth' (but maybe that's intentional?), other than that looks good so far.
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I would say you are off to a great start. I like how the sea came out and the color contrast between the land and the sea gives it some punch. The coast does look a little too "fluid" to me, but it just might be because the map is in its early stages.
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Ocean looks great, has a bit of a look sort of like flicking water drops onto a water color painting in some areas. I might even suggest a lil bit of light green around the coasts to pop it some more and a lil bit of dark steel blue in the depths for contrast.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
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Thanks for the suggestions, I think that'll be a good route to go.
Yeah I know about the coastlinesI'm about to go over the edges to make it look a tad more hand dawn. That or I'm going to redo them completely, I'll have to see how patient I feel today.
Incidentally, the water was the easiest thing ever to do. I took one of my parchment textures, used the clone stamp, patch tool and the spot eraser to clear out the worst of the folds and crinkles, then inverted the colour. that gave me a really good base to work with and I just tweaked it a bit from there. I got the nice gradient by a combination of hand brushing with a low opacity/flow 300 soft brush for the edges, and taking a light blue land shape and guassian blurring at 250 on it's own layer..
My finished maps
"...sometimes the most efficient way to make something look drawn by hand is to simply draw it by hand..."
Ok, so I plopped in an overlay layer of light teal near the coasts and a grey-blue overlay for the depths, it does help pull things out a bit, though I'm still fighting to keep the contrasts from going too far. I think this pulls it off nicely.
I finally gave in and admitted to myself that sometimes the most efficient way to make something (ie the coasts) look drawn out by hand is to simply draw them out by hand
Last edited by Coyotemax; 12-07-2009 at 01:15 AM. Reason: wrong map!
My finished maps
"...sometimes the most efficient way to make something look drawn by hand is to simply draw it by hand..."
Oceans look great, and the coastline is much better.
That nearly closed off sea/bay in the south looks like it'll make for some interesting background/fluff.
Last edited by Steel General; 12-07-2009 at 06:10 AM. Reason: Typos and other stuff
My Finished Maps | My Challenge Maps | Still poking around occasionally...
Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
I'm looking forward to seeing how the world develops. I have a pretty free hand in creating this time, so I have a list of regions and what they're like and it's up to me to put them where they will fit best
So in the spirit of the other Necronomicon styled drawings, I figured I would make this one look inked in blood as well. I borrowed the trees from Ramah's big layer for the testing, though I'll likely do my own for the final run. I started working with those mountains too, but I've come to the conclusion that to get things looking just the way I want them to, it's best to give in and do by hand (much like the coastlines). I am using Ramah's mountains to lay out the basic mountain chains, though
My finished maps
"...sometimes the most efficient way to make something look drawn by hand is to simply draw it by hand..."
This is looking very good so far.
And hey, even if you go and replace those trees the fact you are using them to plan out your map still means they are getting used so that's cool.
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Thank you very much for sharing them! It's not that there's anything wrong with them, in fact for most purposes I would likely give in and just use them. But for this map, I need the consistency in style.
And if nothing else, once I'm done my own tree layer, I'll share that alongside yours
I wonder if one could set up mountains for that too...
My finished maps
"...sometimes the most efficient way to make something look drawn by hand is to simply draw it by hand..."
