I have created a video demonstration of me making a fantasy island map exclusively in Other World Mapper. No tutorial text or talking over, just a 7700% faster screen capture of me using OWM to make up a map on the fly using its native tools. I've never done a video before, but it seemed like an appropriate first video to make, to demo a new program's capabilities. Actual working time is more like 5 hours (video is 5 minutes), which is still quite fast for this level of detail. I would have expected to spend more like 20-40 hours if I was illustrating something like this, on the low end if I was making my own assets and stamping them but nonetheless.
I have to say, while I have figured out how the click to follow works since my post, I still get a glitch with it where just as I go to click to connect it, it disconnects, puts a line across the whole section straight instead of following, and I have to undo and reset. This is potentially visible in the video a few times, though it does happen very fast.
Looks like videos are what everyone's doing these days, so I might do some more of these. It was kinda fun for me to watch a super fast version of the art unfold, so I could observe my process.
I have to say, while I have made several more notes in an email draft to you (so I stop cluttering the forum LOL), overall I think this program's been a gamechanger for me already. I've already used it to make a city road map for a book in half the time it would have taken me to do the lineart manually, and almost every edit I wanted to make was clean and smooth as a whistle (like I said, I made notes). Like I threw in a river, decided later I wanted river echo shorelines, realized 3/4s of the way in that there was an island in the middle of the stupid Tiber river, and didn't have to erase all of the echo shorelines and regenerate them, I just had to draw in an island and it rejiggered automatically. Astonishing. Or like, near the end of the Estavin map, I realized I wanted to have some jaggy island atoll bits making it a pain to boat through a certain region, and boom, added them in just like that and it regenerated the coast waves. Change the color of the rivers? No problemo. Chop a land region in half? Done!
Or like, now that I've figured out how the tool to add trees works, I love that I can cycle and randomly pick from the folder I'm in, and create sets like that. Really has high potential for creating regional sets. Some of my clients are meticulous enough to tell me what types of trees grow in an area, so now I can cluster trees from the central art management database instead of creating a whole new brush each time. While I do want there to be size and color jitter options to make it even more flexible, it is remarkably intuitive once you really dig into creating a map.
In so many ways, it behaves like I WISHED Photoshop could, and knew it never would. I can tell this program is a labor of love designed by people who really listened to the critique and desires of real humans who draw maps, not just a cash grab. And that's why, since the cost to purchase was so reasonable, I'm participating to give back in another way–building hype. I'm talking your program up, because I think it's the next best thing since "expand selection, stroke, expand selection, stroke." I wouldn't bother, except you charge such a reasonable price for it the least I can do is try get a few people excited about it. Let's kick those respective subscription model's arses! All hail reasonably priced programs from small studios!
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Tiana
And yeah, I really dislike subscription model for software and I'm not particularly happy with DRM software either, hence our one time purchase, DRM free commitment.
