WIP - The Eastern shores of Ehren

[kacey]

Stop apologizing, dammit! Just kidding!!!

In my opinion, you should leave the outer border/deco/art as-is for now and see how it turns out. You can always go back later and change it if you need to, but I feel like keeping those parts darker gives the whole thing a nice balance.

Thanks Diamond you've been so helpful I haven't gotten around to it yet, but I will. I plan on changing the coast when I do my rivers, I'll probably do that once I'm done painting the trees.

[kacey]

I’ve got the majority of the outlines done on the trees. There’s still a few spots I have to do, and I’ll add remove trees where I need to after all the labelling is done, and the cities, and towns are in place. This took way longer then I thought it would, so for now I’m totally over it.

I still plan on changing the coast like Diamond suggested, but I’m going to wait until I do my rivers so I can decide what colour will work best.

Now... I have to colour all the trees by hand. It will probably take me another week. Maybe I’m slow, I have no idea how some of you guys pump out maps as fast as you do, thumbs up to you.

Ignore the little black dot in the upper left corner, I put it there because I had to flatten a copy of the image, and I’m doing my trees on that. When I drag the tree layer back into the original file I’ll use that spot to make sure I’ve lined up my layer properly, then I’ll remove it...My computer is misbehaving because I have more layers then it likes.

[kacey]

I started adding colour to these trees, and they just looked hideous so there gone now. I decided to try doing a style similar to the trees on max's Elandaria map, I found the style to be very subtle. I really don't want trees to be the focus, and the ones I was doing, I thought were looking too dominant, and cartoony. I wasted allot of time on them, but I just couldn't settle so they had to go.

Anyway, here's what I have so far. I may add some slight colour variation just to break things up a bit, but this is pretty much it. I don't know if I was able to pull it off, but I'd love to know what you guy's think. I'm really struggling with these trees.

[arsheesh]

This is looking very nice so far Kacey. Nice linework.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Diamond]

Oooh, I like that new forest style a lot! How'd you do that? Is that a brush? As far as the old trees, I actually don't think you need to add any color to them. They were subtle and blended nicely with the mountains as-is.

[Mouse]

Excellent trees

Already a rep-worthy map

[Eilathen]

I like it! No wonder, though, as the Elandaria map is one of my favorite maps ever ^^

Anyway, i do think the style works fine for this map. I would make the forests a bit more pronounced, if you can. They are a bit too subtle as of now...at least for my taste. Maybe a stronger green-ish color would make them pop more? Or some sort of shading (bear in mind, i have no idea what is possible in PS so not sure if i use the correct terms ).

[Falconius]

I like the new trees too, I think I like 'em better than the old ones even. Like Eilathen, I do wish they were a bit clearer though.

[DanielHasenbos]

The trees look very cool. I don't think you need to change the trees themselves but maybe make the edges less faded?

-Dan

[kacey]

I appreciate all the feedback, it look’s like I may just get past these trees after all.

Arsheesh – Thank you so much, I put allot of time into those lines.

Diamond – Thanx, this was actually pretty simple, probably the easiest part so far. I just made a very small tear drop, triangular...ish shaped brush, only 15 by 15 pixels. I set the size to 9, and the spacing to 126. Under shape dynamics I set the size jitter to 43%, the minimum diameter to 5%, roundness jitter to 58%, and the minimum roundness to 64%. I did a scatter of 351%, with a count of 3, and started painting with it.

I just used black for the colour, and set the blend mode to multiply, hoping to preserve some of the back round texture, then fussed around with the hue, saturation, and colour balance until I got the colour I liked. I suppose I could have just chosen a colour I liked to begin with, but I use black for allot of things, that way if I have multiple elements, and I decide I want them all the same colour then all I have to do is copy the hue, saturation, and colour balance adjustment layers, and clip them to the other layers, I find this easier then fussing around with each one individually.

Mouse – Thank’s for the rep! I feel special all over again.

Eilathen – The Elandaria map is probably one of my all time favourites as well, along with Vorropohaiah’s the High-empire of Korachan and the Inner sea map, if I could blend the styles of these two map’s together, and do it even half as well as they do, then I most certainly would.

Anyway... on to the forests. They actually were more pronounced before, I decided to turn down the opacity to make them more subtle, but I was thinking of putting in another layer with slightly darker trees on top, only very sparse to break things up a bit. I’m really trying not to get things looking too green, but that could always change, my mind wanders, and switches direction all the time so who knows what will happen in the end...and almost anything is possible in Photoshop, so long as you’re willing to put in the time.

Falconius – Thank you, I’m glad it’s an improvement. I was originally trying to keep these very, very subtle, but it’s looking like I may have to take into consideration maybe making them more pronounced as you all seem to be in agreance.

DanielHasenbos – Thank you, I see what you’re saying, tho this might be difficult without completely redoing them, which I cringe at. Erasing, or masking the edges doesn’t work, I tried that, and it looks really ugly. I could just paint more trees over top of the faded area, but then I really don’t want them to appear any bigger...I’ll have to think this through for a while, maybe if I let it fester I might come up with a solution to blend my want to keep them very subtle, and you’re guy’s suggestions to make them more pronounced...hmm.

ug...another long post, I would apologize, but then Diamond might just slap me on the wrist.