Arcael

[clyon2662]

Well, after years of lurking and admiring all the great work around here I finally got around to finishing a map enough to post. I started off using Ascension's antique-style tutorial, but I got sidetracked drawing trees and ended up with a totally different kind of map. There are definitely some things I will change next time, but I’m happy enough with the way this one is now. Thanks to all the great people who make tutorials and post maps that make me keep trying to get the hang of mapping.

Done in Photoshop.
Arcael.jpg

[arsheesh]

Well what a great way to delurk! This is a fabulous first pass at a map. You've got an attractive cartoonist style here. A couple suggestions. First, more variation in color would help (for instance if you threw in some more kinds of terrain types). Second, I think it would be more appropriate for a may of this style to hand-draw the towns/cities/nations rather than using nondescript icons. Other than that, great job!

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[clyon2662]

Well what a great way to delurk! This is a fabulous first pass at a map. You've got an attractive cartoonist style here. A couple suggestions. First, more variation in color would help (for instance if you threw in some more kinds of terrain types). Second, I think it would be more appropriate for a may of this style to hand-draw the towns/cities/nations rather than using nondescript icons. Other than that, great job!

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

Thanks for the kind words. I definitely agree with the colour suggestion, I struggled with the green monochrome a fair bit and terrain types would have been a good way to break that up, I will keep it in mind. The labels and icons I threw on at the last minute because my original idea of leaving it blank looked much too empty. My structure drawing isn't very good, but I'll experiment with hand drawn towns between now and the next map and see if I can get it to work. I just noticed that I never did put any roads in either, oh well, I guess they can all just cut through farmer Maggot's fields to get where they're going.

[SJS]

I'm so impressed with the many different styles of map making I see on this forum, and they all just look great. This map really looks nice.

[flocko]

This is nice! I'm actually a fan of the simple color scheme. I think it fits with the cartoon-y nature of the map. For me there's just enough tonal variation in the grass to keep it interesting.

[clyon2662]

Thanks SJS and flocko. I originally used some rendered clouds to give the grass some variation, but the look wasn't what I wanted. After going over it a few times with some different shades manually, though, it looked a bit better.