The Butcher, The Baker, and that Other Guy by Ascension

[jfrazierjr]

Map




Created in: Photoshop

Review

This map started as a way to create a hand drawn map and practice using various Photoshop effects in order to speed up the end result. After a number of uploaded works in progress, Ascension accidentally saved over his layered version of the original map with single flattened layer and started over from the begging with an entirely different landmass as well as somewhat different style to produce this final result. In addition to the Finished Map, I would highly suggest checking out the posts in the WIP thread.

I don't know if Ascension ever found a faster method to get hand drawn results, but the results are stunning irregardless.

I wanted to finish this up while I had some time to do so. I came up with names for towns - took the easy way out and picked musical terms that most folks don't really know too well. Naming the terrain features was also fairly simple as I used a translator (Babylon 9) and once I decided to name my desert "The Bakery" I then decided to name my volcanoes "The Candles"...all I needed was a butcher and I had my title so the forest became "The Forest of Butchery". I know my translations are technically incorrect but I didn't have enough space to cram all that text in that some of the languages require so I took some shortcuts. The languages are Swedish, Irish, English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Turkish. The parchment was one of CoyoteMax's that I tweaked out the bright areas. I am bad at drawing ships so I used the Ships n Boats font for those. The only other font on the whole thing is Bouwsma Uncial and since it doesn't have any numbers I had to use Roman numerals for the scale (0, 50, 100, 150, 200, 250). So the parchment, font, and ships are not mine but the drawing and painting are. I wanted to do something nice for the title text but I am also really bad at designing swirlies and swashes; that's also why I didn't do a proper cartouche. The rhumblines, shrug, just something I threw in instead of doing a compass. The color scheme might seem odd but I wanted to use a 19th century palette like they use in the old "bird's eye" style of city maps. It was mainly for practice and learning how to set my layers up a little better (which I failed at miserably ending up with over 100 again because each little icon has 3 layers with it, 4 with text). This version is scaled down to 66% and quality reduced from 12 to 9 to fit the forum limits. The original is 22 x 18 (6600 x 5100) and full quality jpg is 28 megs.

What I learned: work on a smaller canvas when just practicing because it may turn into something huge

What I still need to work on: using less layers, learn to draw boats and swirlies and cartouches, make it all "less busy" which should be easier if working on a smaller canvas.

Original threads:
Click here to view the Finished Map thread.
Click here to view the WIP thread.

[Clercon]

Congrats Ascencion for having another featured map. The map itself looks absolutely fantastic!

[arsheesh]

Agreed, this is one inspirational piece of work! I'd say this month's featured map was very well chosen. Congrats man.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[ravells]

Absolutely brilliant, Big A. You just keep pushing the boundaries and getting better.

[Steel General]

@Ascension - You always amaze me with what you come up with using an ancient version of Photoshop

[Ascension]

Heh heh. If you want a map to look old you have to use old tools. Sort of a rip of CoyoteMax's hand-drawn mantra.

[ProneKobra]

What a beautiful map! I love how authentic it looks!

[DazedNConfused]

Awesome! I hope to be able to do this kind of work.

[Moe]

I fell in love with this brilliant map and I am salivating with pleasure...

>Moe

[Ascension]

Thank you very much, Moe.