Expirmenting with coloured maps and borders

[Kellerica]

What are your methods for creating borderart?

To me, it's a combination of many things.

My best friend when starting out is the Custom Shape tool. I have a bunch of shapes downloaded from all over, and a pretty large collection of stuff I've created myself over the years. I usually start out with some very basic shapes, rectangles and circles and the like, and form a rough base for the border. Then I'll go crazy with the Layer Styles tool to further define the border and make it blend more naturally in with the rest of the artwork. Possibly add decorative patterns on top of everything (I also have a couple of rune fonts I like to use for decorating). For my last few maps, I've ended up doing freehand lineart and shading on top these elements, in order to make them feel like in line with the rest of the map. If you are using the latest CC version of Photoshop, the new symmetry feature of the brush tool is a godsend when drawing borders, by the way!

In this snippet of a WIP map I was working on recently, you can kind of see an unintentional step-by-step to how I put the thing together.



Let me know if I can expand on this - not sure if the explanation makes any sense or not.


I think the map looks great so far, by the way. I'm not completely sold on the line patter on the ocean, I think it looks maybe a tad restless as it is. I think you certainly have a good idea there, but it could maybe use a bit further refining.

I'd love to see a bit stronger texture on this too... but then again, I don't call a map done unless it has 15 of the damn things, so I'm very biased in this regard Take it all with a grain of salt.

I look forward to seeing this develop!