Untitled Campaign Map

[Coyotemax]

Started working on a new map request!

My favourite thing about this one is that I've been meaning to head this particular direction with my style for a bit now (inspired by Ramah!).

With the supplied sketch, I was able to easily work up the coastlines and terrain layout. I'll likely adjust a few things slightly as I go (especially the exact flow of the rivers etc) but this seems workable so far. the colours will likely get adjusted towards the end a bit as well, but for the moment, these are quite workable. I'm planning on doing the mountains completely by hand instead of brushes, I'm getting tired of seeing the same slopes and angles all the time from my set

I'm doing this to be rather large sized again, so I'll be posting the WIP's at half size, with occasional detail crops at full size. I'm also planning on doing a Zoomify version when all is done as well, to allow for zooming and scrolling.

*rubs hands together and grins maniacally*

Here goes nothing!

[edit- map is done, completion post here!

[Coyotemax]

So far so good, mountains are going to be a pain, but so worth it.

[Steel General]

Very Ramah-esque...

[fiskonius]

Those are some beautiful mountains! Lookin good, man!

[Coyotemax]

And now I remember why I started turning mountains into brushes from my previous maps and just recycling them.. I seemed to have blocked the agony out of my mind after moving onwards

Still, that's overshadowed by the concept of "if you want them to look just so, the only way is to hand draw them".

Here's the layout so far, I've added in marker colours for the hill ranges as well. I realized that I'd made the working legend right on the shrunk version and not saved it, so you'll have to do without this time. Still, nothing else has been changed except the addition of brown to represent hills.

The last 2 days have been a bit slow going, my muse seems to have taken a break, but I've been getting in there and making progress anyhow. Sometimes you gotta say "i don't care whether i feel like working or not" and just do work

I was playing around with the layers a bit to test things, and though the mountains are a bit harsh black right now, it looks like they'll do what I want them to when all is in place.

Took a screenshot for this upload, 25% of fullsize (the unshaded mountains actually look kind of neat at this scale)

[torstan]

Interesting. I always work the other way around. Fully detailed line drawing and then go for the colour. I like your way. Looking good, and I feel your pain on the mountains. But it is the only way to get it looking just so 10 out of 10 for commitment!

[Juggernaut1981]

Torstan> I think the colouring might just be a "very detailed guide" system. I used a massive brush and kind of "scribbled" where I wanted things to end up... I get the feeling Coyote just does it with a bit more care and a smaller brush.

[torstan]

I totally agree - it's just that my scribbling is done with hard round brush on one layer that I then reduce the opacit of and work ove the top of on a new layer. I don't add colour until later. I like the approach of throwing a bit of colour in early on.

[Coyotemax]

Juggernaut is correct, I like to have the areas laid out with colours so I can see how they're going to overlap, what I want to put where, and get an idea when zoomed way out as to whether it looks reasonably viable in a geologic sense.

As for the actual colours and such, I have done some where I do all the detail work first then do colours at the end. But having worked in both ways, I've decided I like getting at least the basic colours in first so I have a better visual in my minds eye on how things will look when they're done, plus in cases like this it can give the client an idea of how the final product will come together with the colours.. the Dark Lands map is an even more extreme example of that, I also wanted to make sure as I was drawing that the blood smudging effect I was using wouldn't interfere with other layers, and so on. The other thing this allows is that if I get worn out from working on one aspect, I can always put time into textures and still progress on the work instead of taking an outright break. yay for efficiency

Incidentally, I used a 200px (with the image size what it is, that's a relatively medium size) soft brush for the terrain guides with each colour on a separate layer in their own folder, then set the opacity/blending modes so that I could see what I was doing without it interfering with the rest of the work, and turn on/off each layer if I feel the need Might be a bit overkill, but I find it's more flexible than doing all the guidelines on the same layer. You just need to go "D'oh, I wish I would have done that differently" once
I guess you could say I'm evolving my workflow

[edit] Oh yeah, mountain update.. basic shadows are done, about to start detail work!

[moutarde]

Not overkill at all. Through much trial and error (and massive amounts of redrawing) I've learned that there's no such thing as too many layers