Greetings from a lurker!

[thomden]

I joined this forum early last year, but have mostly just been lurking and enjoying all the amazing cartography!

I decided to become active this year and start sharing my own maps with the community. I enjoy helpful feedback, so don't hesitate to provide critiques.

Here is an old-world style map I drew for a fantasy world I'm developing called Hawkmoor. Thanks for checking it out!

[Kellerica]

Well done for stepping out of the shadows! I think I used to be a member for a year too, before I actually started posting stuff. So better late than never, yeah? And you've got a solid style going for this map here as well! The coastlines aren't really my cup of tea, as the fractal/cloud origin is a bit too obvious to my eye, but I like the faded colors and the low detail level.

I already repped your other map, so I'll have to pass on this one, but it would deserve it too. Welcome to the Guild proper!

[thomden]

as the fractal/cloud origin is a bit too obvious to my eye

This is incredibly useful feedback. The Photoshop clouds technique is one of the tools I use occasionally, but it's good to hear it's too obvious here. For example I remember when SketchUp models started being overused, and now I prefer to see hand drawn maps instead of SketchUp renders. I still think SketchUp is a great tool and has it's place. So thank you!

Interestingly I did a post of this on my blog almost exactly 9 years ago, so yeah the technique is old. Map Generation using Photoshop Clouds

[Kellerica]

It's a really useful technique when used in a more subtle manner, and can be really helpful if you're completely stuck on creating landmasses. There was this one guy on these forums, who took this kind of thing one step beyond and created a really cool way of doing hightmaps using gradients together with the cloud filters. Check this out, if you're interested. By combining this with some stuff from Tear's Saderan tutorial, where you use a soft brush with low opacity underneath the Treshold filter in order to make some adjustments to the result from the heightmaps, you can come up with some really awesome coastlines. I've used this techique occasionally, even if I usually end up stitching the final coastlines from multiple points of the resulting shapes.

[thomden]

That's amazing, thanks!

[ThomasR]

Really nice contrast and colors, welcome !