First Map Post

[CloudFang]

Think it's looking great. About the color: in my opinion, I like the yellower tinted slightly less saturated color. The deep blues and greens remind me of a save the planet shirt. Just reminds me of earth pics too much to not constantly compare. I'm all for colors that make the world seem a bit more fantastic or unearthly. I tend to buy into another world that way more. I also think the yellowish tint helps unify the landmass and oceans better so the whole map feels slightly more unified and less land vs sea. Just my thoughts!?

But more importantly how are you achieving your topographical layers? The depth and structure look really cool. What's the technique you are using?

[wthrasherb]

Hey CloudFang! Thanks for the feed back. I agree that the yellows are a little over saturated in some of the maps. I'm completely self-taught (with the help of the community tutorials here) with all the software and techniques that I use, so I'm always learning and trying out different ways to do things. As for looking similar to earth, well, I always have my National Geographic Atlas of the World on hand when I'm working.



I actually like to do more of a mix of realistic and fantasy looking maps. I got started with my love for maps with fantasy rpgs, so I've always gravitated towards "game maps" than real world maps. I have since come to love maps in general, but still prefer working on the fun game-style maps.

The topographic "sculpting" was done mostly with Fractal Terrains 3 (by Profantasy Software) and Wilbur (Created by Joseph R. Slayton). With those programs you can shape the planet surface in all kinds of ways. Even though I owned Fractal Terrains for many years I never really used it much. I didn't get it. Then I found the "Israh" tutorial (either on here or on the web in general, I don't remember) and started playing around with the techniques that tutorial teaches. I spend a good deal of time with Fractal Terrains and Wilbur doing nothing but shaping the land/topo features. It takes a long time compared to just drawing some things by hand, but the BEAUTIFUL thing is that once you have a good world map made in FT then you can save all kinds of different views, projections, zoom levels and such without having to redraw new maps. This work in progress thread started after I did all the work in FT/Wilbur. Everything I've done since I started this thread has been in Photoshop.

[wthrasherb]

I'm proud to present this map today. For anyone who has been following along, I've been focusing on the ocean and finding some kind of blending that works for me. Consider it done. I added some "grungy" texturing and more Photoshop magic and got the following result. I also touched up some coloring in some areas to add some subtle variations. The first image here is just the map image. The second image is the map with a border and "cartouche" and I added a canvas texture to give it a subtle "painted on canvas" look. I'm not sure if you can see all of the detail on the lower res version I had to upload here. Today I'm going to get some posters printed to see how the color and detail looks.

Comments, feedback, tips, praise... all are welcome. Enjoy!