100% hand drawn in Campaign Cartographer 3+

[Tonnichiwa]

Hello fellow Cartographers.

This morning I've been following along with Torstan's tutorial on how he draws Isometric mountain ranges. And I took his instructions and, instead of using Photoshop, I used Campaign Cartographer's new Photoshop effects.

I admit that I am really not good at photoshop at all so I have no idea what I am doing. But I still wanted to try. So this is my very first drawing using no symbols of any kind in CC3+. I used the freehand drawing tool and followed along with the tutorial, adding layers and colors as I could figure out how. I've also never colored anything before in photoshop so this is new to me.

So I hope you enjoy my first 100% hand drawn mountains in CC3+

[Mouse]

Hey Tonnichiwa!

I was wondering why you'd gone all quiet again - and now I know.

That is just... stunning

[Greg]

Torstan's tutorials are always a great place to start and time again I head back to his site if I get stuck or want to try something new.

One quick thing that Mouse maybe better equipped to explain for CC3+, as I've no idea about it, but if you can reduce the opacity of some of the shading lines (particularly those white highlights) and build it up a tiny bit more, then these will be even better. Either way, nice job on something completely new Tonnichiwa, so I can't wait to see you using them in a map.

[Mouse]

I have every faith in Tonnichiwa working that out for himself after seeing what he's already done with this, but for the benefit of anyone else who might be reading this - reducing the opacity of a sheet (which is equivalent to a PS layer) is just a case of decreasing the opacity variable on the Transparency Sheet Effect I suspect is already in play on that particular sheet

[Greg]

I have every faith in Tonnichiwa working that out for himself after seeing what he's already done with this

So do I Mouse. Some of his recent work has been stunning. Just like I said, I've absolutely zilch idea about CC3, let alone it's newer features so didn't know if it was complicated.

[Mouse]

So do I Mouse. Some of his recent work has been stunning. Just like I said, I've absolutely zilch idea about CC3, let alone it's newer features so didn't know if it was complicated.

Well that makes us a mirror pair, cos I don't know anything about PS (except that it has layers instead of sheets)

[Josiah VE]

Heheh, I love what people are thinking of. Using CC3 for the exact opposite purpose it was intended for.
Looks great Tonnichiwa.

[ChickPea]

Nice work, Tonnichiwa! As others have said, it's great to see people pushing the boundaries of their software.

[Tonnichiwa]

@Mouse: Thanks Mouse. Believe it or not there is no sheet with an effect on it that is actually called a transparency. Instead, each layer has what is called an Overlay, which I suspect has a transparency built in but isn't called such.

@GLS: Thanks GLS. I'm glad I used Torstan's tutorial because I was having a hard time figuring out where the shading and highlighting should go on the mountains I was trying to do before I settled on this one. So I added a lot more detail to them like he does on his mountains and it by doing so it just seemed to scream at me where to highlight and shade. I was hoping to blend those white lines in a lot more but I couldn't get them to work the way I wanted. I may have to erase them and use a less saturated white.

@Josiah VE: Thanks Josiah VE. Something that surprised me about CC3+ is how difficult it is to try to use the program as a paint package. I wasn't expecting it to turn out so difficult. Some of the things that make it hard to do the way you would in photoshop is that there are virtually no freehand brushes that you can vary the hardness and type with. Instead, all you really have is a drawing pencil. So I had to learn how to set the pen thickness and line thickness so that I could cover more area with color. There is also no pressure sensitivity for my drawing tablet. that made things interesting when trying to add a deeper shade to certain areas. Couple those things with no familiarity with how to color something using a paint program, nor what the effects in photoshop are actually designed to do.

I could have let the program do all of the work for me, by making everything into a multipoly and then a Symbol that I could auto highlight and shade but I wanted to actually do it all without the help of the programs auto tools. And I wanted to see what the Photoshop type effects would do.
honestly, I'm pretty surprised that I got this far.

@Chickpea: Thanks Chickpea. Believe it or not, you are the reason I actually tried doing this. When I heard what you said to Mouse about her trying to make something using Gimp, I just HAD to try using CC3+ to try something by hand too. Thanks for that!

[Mouse]

LOL! ChickPea strikes again!!!