Map 54 - Country Name TBD

[Chumpy76]

Kingdom5.jpg
Any thoughts on how the mountains and hills look on the fleshed out western part?

[J.Edward]

Interesting. I used to attempt to do some like that.
It's a good style for top down, but hard to do well.

[Chumpy76]

Interesting. I used to attempt to do some like that.
It's a good style for top down, but hard to do well.

lol, "interesting"?
/tries to figure out how to take that, lol

[J.Edward]

hehe, not in a bad way
I was only semi-successful doing that method.
It was a hard way to do a large area.
My earliest examples were... meh.
https://www.cartographersguild.com/a...chmentid=66534
That's a lesser example. I sort of moved into a different way of doing it.
The lines are helpful for determining the shape for casting shadow.
But the lines sort of got in the way later.

You can see that progression in my country thread, Nahadua.
I think this one shows it best....
https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...l=1#post296858
It's not exactly the same, but similar... ish.

[Chumpy76]

hehe, not in a bad way
I was only semi-successful doing that method.
It was a hard way to do a large area.
My earliest examples were... meh.
https://www.cartographersguild.com/a...chmentid=66534
That's a lesser example. I sort of moved into a different way of doing it.
The lines are helpful for determining the shape for casting shadow.
But the lines sort of got in the way later.

You can see that progression in my country thread, Nahadua.
I think this one shows it best....
https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...l=1#post296858
It's not exactly the same, but similar... ish.

Yeah, I really loved what you did with the mountains in Nahadua, but I couldn't quite work out how you went from the caterpillars to the soother texture

[J.Edward]

It's hard to explain.
I use a soft brush at low opacity.
I paint that on a multiply layer for the shadows.
I use a low-t0-mid warm grey as the color.
Sometimes i will use several multiply layers to build up.
Each will be at differing opacities.
Just lots of subtle adding here and there to build a shape.
It's gets balanced on the light side with highlights, so your base color needs to something at least off of white.
Tan to cream, or darker. Then the highlights will show up well.
I tend to do my highlights as a softlight layer, rather than overlay.
I sort of just used the caterpillars to get the main shape of the ridges and sub-ridges.
I then realized it just didn't really work with those lines in there and turned that layer off.

[Chumpy76]

hmm... question - looking for a second opinion: If you start at the sea and go inland to the east, does it look like there is a river under the border between 54 and 57? (I know there is one further east, but I am talking about coming straight in from the sea.)
I think there is, based on this map: https://www.cartographersguild.com/a...2&d=1460698549
but it was hard to see and I totally missed it on first look at this one
large54.jpg

[J.Edward]

hmm... question - looking for a second opinion: If you start at the sea and go inland to the east, does it look like there is a river under the border between 54 and 57? (I know there is one further east, but I am talking about coming straight in from the sea.)
I think there is, based on this map: https://www.cartographersguild.com/a...2&d=1460698549
but it was hard to see and I totally missed it on first look at this one
large54.jpg

Here's a clearer view for ya.
country54x.jpg

[Chumpy76]

yup - that's a river. thanks

[J.Edward]

yup - that's a river. thanks

No problem