The Seven Kingdoms of Wrath (A newbie's journey!)

[The Flanston]

Hi guys
School holidays are coming to an end here so I will now have more time to dedicate to producing a map for my fantasy novel. I posted the early stages of my journey on another thread (Curse you! Curse you all!) but now I see this as a WIP so I thought I would post it here. Hope that's ok

Still trying to learn the techniques to produce the result I'm after. These are the things I've looked at so far:
Producing a more convincing coastline
Background textures
Compass roses
Coverting images to brushes in Photoshop and Pantshop Pro

Next things I will be working on will be:
Suitable border
Finished design for compass roses
Producing some drawings to convert into brushes for terrain and water
Choosing a really nice font
Converting my own script into a font
Designing heraldic symbols for various factions
Designing icons for cities, castles, armies etc
Plus a dozen things I haven't yet considered

I've already incorporated people's comments from the other threads so please keep them coming.

So here's the progression so far...
The World of Wrath.jpg

This was the first sketch I was working to

Cheers
TheFlanston

[The Flanston]

This was my initial attempt after being inspired by the Guild

Playing with roses, brushes and textures.jpg

[The Flanston]

And this is me starting on the final map

Wrath 1 JPEG.jpg

Comments and hints very much appreciated. Will make further posts as I progress...

Cheers
Peter

[Diamond]

I like that new coastline quite a bit. One thing that immediately springs to mind, though, is that the background is so dark/contrasty that it might take away attention from the land... I guess we won't know for sure until you start building though.

Keep up the good work.

[Falconius]

I don't know it looks fantastic with the black land contrasting so wildly with the back ground, I'm kind of hoping he finds a way to keep it. Either way I like the new coast line with all the new islands and fjords.

[The Flanston]

Cheers guys
I agree with both of you I like the drama of the black outline and the moody border. I've been working on borders and brushes with varying levels of success. Here's where I'm up to right now...

Wrath 2.jpg

I did the knotwork border using a cool font from 'Fontineed' Celtic Border Font, Download Celtic Border .ttf truetype or .zip Free - FontIneed

It was a bit clumsy going round the whole border and I had to copy and paste a couple of sections. Then I just made three layers to give it a bit of depth. Not exactly the feel I am looking for but it's close.

I drew the 'scale' border in photoshop but I need to antique it. Any tips on how to do this would be appreciated.

I also sketched out some images to convert into brushes but I'll upload those in the next post...

Cheers
Peter

[The Flanston]

Pesky brushes!
Goodness, there is a lot to learn I don't really have the time for this steep learning curve but I'm finding hard to resist! I still toy with the idea of commissioning a more qualified person to produce a map for me. Will have to wait and see...

Anyway... here are the brushes I sketched out with ink and pen. I'm no great artist but I think they are ok. I plan to rotate, resize, distort and combine the images to produce a series of paint tubes for when I start to fill the map in properly.

Mountains1 reduced.jpg

Trees reduced.jpg

And here's how one of the mountains looks as a brush...

Mountain brush.jpg

*Problem*
I guess this is just a resolution problem but I struggled to get the brushes to look decent at the size I wanted them. My pooter is already struggling with the size of the file (I'm using Photoshop 7, which only allows me to use 1.7gb of Ram even though the comp has 8. Sigh... )

My best solution so far is to apply the brushes in a different file with just the land mass at a higher res, then copy the layer over and resize to fit. This produces better results than just using a smaller brush.

I'm also struggling with the transparency of the brush which makes it a pain when overlapping. If you know of any tutorials that might be suitable I'd love to know.

Ok... I'm off to skecth out some towns and cities although I should be writing! I'm never gonna get the book finished at this rate lol

Cya

[Eilathen]

Hi and welcome to the Guild, Flanston.
An interesting landshape you have here. I like it! And your mountains are just awesome, very well done. Looking forward to these moutains "in action", so to speak.

[Arilayna]

Hi, Flanston! I like the sketchy nature of your hand drawn brushes. I hope you can make them work! The parchment background with the dark outline is pretty rocking. Looking forward to seeing where you go with all this!

[Nian]

That looks really cool so far.