WIP Nedrine: A core world of the Colara Series

[freja82]

Hello everyone, so i'm going to try to have my first work in progress for one of the Core worlds of Colara. This is the lineart for the planet Nedrine. Since I am starting this WIP a little late into the process, I will say i have shameless used multiple dofferent tutorials and mix and matched until i found a way i like to make my outlines. This is all done in photoshop. It takes an average of one day to three to get to the finished lineart stage depending on how much free time I have. Since I did most of the lineart for all of my maps while i was recovering from surgery and was bedridden...well 16 maps took me a week and a half using mouse and tablet. Wow, my hands were not happy with me when i was done. So at this point we have the basic lineart and from here I will be attempting to make the maps in a style that is evolving.

Nedrine is one of the four core worlds of Colara, it is based in a complete pocket universe outside of the universe cut off by a magic/tech barrier that the sorcerous people created and fled to at the brink of annihilation from another species intent to hunt them all down and consume them. This was their people's last desperate hope for survival. It is now a little under 1000 years since this has happened. The central World of Colara is surrounded by the four core worlds Reith, Calyx, Nedrine, and Sular. The four worlds are in turn connected to 3 more each, the 12 worlds of which I have not come up with a satisfactory term for yet. These worlds are Corinth, Devi, Doralla, Erdith, Frell, Grael, Lagranne, Melore, Meridred, Mylia,and Palore. There is another 60 worlds, five each around these worlds, but i'm not going to be making maps for all of these tiny worlds as they will not matter to the overall story in any significant way. This society is technologically advanced and they use both technology and magic separate and together. They have space travel, but can also use portals in order to visit each of the worlds in their system. I know just enough science to know that there are some issues with synchronous orbit and whatnot , to which i reply MAGIC yay!!!! I am 3 years in the worldbuilding phase and STILL struggling as there is just SO MUCH when building an entire universe from scratch. I may have bit off a little too much here, but i'm gamely trudging on.

So here's where i started getting into some issues. When looking for a style on mapping i ran into so many styles where i liked them, but it didnt feel right for different reasons. I liked the artistic style, but it seemed to middle earthy, not enough sci fi for my advanced worlds, the atlas maps are beautiful, but i am terrible and i mean TERRIBLE at mountains and other landforms. This has been consuming me for a year, possibly two. I have been trying and trying and trying with differing levels of absolute failure, and even when others (my husband) says it looks awesome i just think its terrible. I hate it. Making the atlas style maps and those with terrain is a little harder for me as well, since each of these worlds are controlled by sorcerers who have complete autonomy in the running of their terrain. So, say Nedrine has an Elemental Mage that controls the northern half of the planet, she is capable and within her rights to completely terraform the entirety as she sees fit. Natural Terrain is all up in the air after almost 1000 years of being messed around by inconsiderate egotistical mages if you know what i mean. For the most part, I need general political mapping in order to get further into this project. so eventually i gave up on terrain mapping and decided to go with that.

Now this society is completely different than it had been before the closing of the shield wall as they put it, but since coming here society has evolved into a more regimental aristocracy. At the top you have the Empress of Colara, under her and her house you have the 15 Major Noble Houses, under them you have the Minor Noble houses. Each house has a main house and three minor houses. They are spread all over the worlds, while their family home regions are spread out the main families spend most of their time on the home world where anyone who is anyone hangs out. They may own entire planets, but the Core world is where everything goes on. Here's where i had to do math (UGH) so i have 49 main houses and something like 250+ minor houses to spread out all over these worlds. With lots of trial and error I ended up cutting up names and house affiliation and putting them in a spare pringles can old school way. So, no world has more than one of the same branch on it. In order to stop any major power grabbing and possible takeovers from happening the Main branches all got one of the tiny worlds for their homes in the outer sectors. They own and control them, the only sorcerers there are the ones from the family line. The twelve middle worlds each have 2 sorcerers who maintain the planetary protective shield and has free reign to do whatever they want when they are not summoned or given a task to work on by the ruling house. The four Core worlds have the same thing going on and the central world has four sorcerers who maintain the planetary shield, a single sorcerer who is the head of the sorcerers who lives at the capital and all mage training and councils are held there and there alone.

The Maps I am building will have the continental maps art, with the family branch regions, the ruling territory mages and the lower peasant non mage cities which are run by civilian empire intermediaries and an ever present military force. There will also be Floating Aristocratic cities, and Submerged Aristocratic cities. As i go through i will probably be adding things I created like the shields denoting the different houses and the military designations and the head of the household badges.

Please Note* This is my first real WIP and i don't really have any idea where i am going with this. I want to give everyone a basic rundown but its all kind of all over the place and messy. Please feel free to comment, ask question, get nitty gritty on details. it helps to have someone other than myself in case i miss really obvious stuff. it happens.

So here She is, Nedrine is all her liney magnificence

[freja82]

so its shaping up to be a very long night. work on mapping it is. YAY!

Ok, so at this point I have added three or four different textures, for both land and ocean, messed around with hue, saturation and vibrancy. I still may go in and mess with these later, but this will be close enough for now. I added a continental Stroke of 15 pixels and stacked duplicated layers adding a very light bevel to make it pop. I also took the land edges and embossed them, adding a drop shadow, and an inner glow using the globe light of 145 Degrees. I made the land layer smaller to give myself a little more room to mess around with future framework as soon as i figure out what theme I want to go for this this one and to leave room for ocean labeling a little later.

[freja82]

So after a little bit of a crazy and overwhelming christmas i got back to mapping. This one is proving a little bit difficult to nail down what im going for. This next photo has the Beginning framework but what do you guys think? Im not sure if im ok with it, if it works or if i absolutely hate it. I keep waffling back and forth.

[Sernogan]

I like your shapes. I wish I could get shapes I like. I've got a million different photoshop files in various states of completion that I either got bored with and/or just hate the shapes. LOL. I also like the oceans texture and detail. The land colors look odd to me, but don't let my opinion on that discourage you. Do what you like. I'm looking forward to seeing more of this map as you work toward completion.

[freja82]

thank you. Yeah i'm not sure what it is about this one, but it bothers me too. I have more issues with this than any of the other ones i've been working on. Maybe its because i really hate pink, but with 16 maps, pink kinda has to get in there a few times. After two years of experimenting with different ways of making landforms I came across a video tutorial. I ended up adapting their way of making all my landforms. Its a little time consuming, but I like the Attention to detail and the ability to really get all the islands and everything exactly how i want them so each map is unique. I think the youtube video series is from a user called tabletop. It's a 9 video series. If you like the way thats done, it should be the first video. It's the only thing from the video series i ended up adopting. I did make a few changes from the way he does it for myself though. When he makes a group for landforms I make a separate groups for islands and groups of islands and then go back in after i have all the major landforms where i want them and have my tectonic plates all laid out. When i first started doing it this way it was taking me an average of three days to complete through the lineart stage. By the 3rd map it was taking me about a day, but since i was recovering from surgery at the time, i had some very serious time on my hands with nothing else to do. I was VERY sick of drawing landforms by the time i got to my last map. lol.

[Sernogan]

I'm familiar with his videos. I've actually been doing it the way that guy does it more or less. I think I'm just really picky and haven't got anything that really excites me yet.

[freja82]

Yeah I know hoe that can be. Mapmaking is awesome and far more frustrating that people realize.