Reply With QuoteMan, what a difference walking away from the computer for awhile makes.
Switched completely to relief shading reference and this is turning out SO much better.
The shaded relief makes the mountains stand out much more!
Man, what a difference walking away from the computer for awhile makes.
Switched completely to relief shading reference and this is turning out SO much better.
You're right : the shades are making a big difference ! It's an interesting map you have here.
I like how you draw terrain, snow, mountains. If you want to, you could also work a little bit on the coastline : for now, the continent seems to float a little in the air. Perhaps by making the sea clearer near the coast, you would better integrate the continent into the sea?
Coming together quickly now. All the towns currently on the map are named (some placeholder, but at least they're not all 'Orlane' over and over), I have a full set of roads and shipping routes, and I think I have all the major geography accounted for, though that probably won't stop me from adding more later.
EDIT: This picture is at half resolution, so the scale saying "1 pixel = 1/4 mile" is wrong for this preview, it'd be a 1/2 mile instead.
First time I'm feeling confident enough to be posting this at full resolution!
Still a lot of polish to do, but it's getting to feel like an honest-to-god map.
Daily WIP update: Lots and lots of little tweaks to the geography, roads, and colors. Added the footer to the map with legend info and started sketching out the crests of the major territories.
Beautiful! I think the ocean is a little dark, though. And over-saturated. If you want to keep it that way I'd suggest to add a light-toned outline to the land mass or maybe a little glow (if you're into that). And there's one mountain part in the top right, close to the snowy area, that could blend in a little more, meaning the transition from the dark shaded snowy mountains on one side to the lighter shaded mountains on the other side.
I'm not too fond of the legend, I have to say. It has a weird feel to it, like ... almost spacey (edit: I mean the colors and the general layout, NOT the symbols). This would be great for a planet map but for a DnD game? I don't know. Wait for more comments before you change anything, though.
Keep up the good work!
~~Rongar
No, you're right about that, I'm already making tweaks to make it more fantasy.Originally Posted by Rongar
I'm not too fond of the legend, I have to say. It has a weird feel to it, like ... almost spacey (edit: I mean the colors and the general layout, NOT the symbols). This would be great for a planet map but for a DnD game? I don't know. Wait for more comments before you change anything, though.
Keep up the good work!
~~Rongar
I just wanted to post here and say that for one of the first times in the 20+ years I've been using Photoshop, it wouldn't let me save a file because it was too big.
Clearly, I'm on the right track here.
Major styling update! Think I might be done with this in the next day or two. Going to be excited to make my first post in the Finished Maps section.
(Obviously, the text on the bottom is a placeholder lorem ipsum, trying to decide what I'll be doing with it.)
Last edited by Dumont; 02-02-2017 at 06:57 PM.
Resurrection!!!
I'm restarting this project because I've decided that I love this map and I'd like to modify it for a potential campaign setting project: Like a full-on PDF or Roll20 module with content for multiple gaming sessions.
In order to do that, though, I need to remove stuff that was proprietary: Like, for example, putting the Elsire Vale in the center of the continent because my game was working towards starting the Red Hand of Doom.
I've also never been 100% satisfied with the layout of forestry on the map, and I'm attempting to fix that.
Lastly, I'm having doubts now about the general scale of the map. The distances and sizes of the continent were built out of some preconceptions regarding the starting point, and now I feel like I've painted myself into a corner because it turns out that this 'continent' doesn't even come close to being a large land mass by those standards. Just based on the back-of-the-napkin calculations I've done, the square mileage of this land mass most closely resembles the island of New Guinea. That's... not big enough to justify such a wide range of biomes present.
I could easily just quadruple the numbers and call it good, but I feel like how I have communities and rivers laid out would no longer be appropriate, as well as the texturing on the forested areas. Input on that subject is something I'd definitely welcome.
C&C is HEAVILY encouraged! I've put a lot into this map, but it's one of the few I've ever progressed this far.
### Latest WIP ###
Last edited by Dumont; 07-29-2018 at 01:24 AM.
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