Llannagh's search for mappines

[Llannagh]

Hi all!

It took me a while longer than I would have wanted to produce something. As seems to be the new rage around here, I'll start a thread in which I will post my thoughts, experiments and tryouts. So you can watch while I'm trying to find my way through the forest of possibilities, the dark caves of soft- and hardware and the streets of inspiration (and the lack thereof). You may laugh when I hit a branch, stalagmite or -tite, or a lamppost. I am hopeful, though, for my Intuos will guide me true through the tribulations of photoshop, the temptations of videogaming, the... okay, I'll stop now.

So here's what I've got so far (as of 2019):

I am looking for a way to make a rather large map with a lot details. To achieve that, I took my map of Skahria and divided it into six pieces:



I cut out one of the pieces and blew it up to fit in A3 format:



I divided that one again, and cut out and expanded one of those parts aswell:



As you can see, I started sketching on the map. All of this is nothing final. I hope to be able to try more tonight.

When expanding the sections, the coastlines became pixeled, as was expected. I retraced them and added a little more detail. The plan is to scale of theses parts down again and then put them into one quite large document. I am expecting to lose details this way, but I will still have the detailed, more local maps that will fit together.
When I first started mapping my world, I started out big and then went on to map on a smaller scale. I found it to be difficult to keep the consistency of the overall map.

Also, this time I hope I won't lose myself in the progress of finding a style. I find myself getting caught up in the details. What I want is a fairly easy an d quick way to draw a map that is still elegant and artistically satisfying. We'll see how that'll go!

Hope to post something more soon!

Peace,
Lllannagh

[J.Edward]

Nice start Llannagh
I always enjoy seeing zoom-ins with maps.

[Kellerica]

Yep, looking good so far!

I'd personally recommend focusing on the local maps, and then creating a separate map of the whole world with a minimal detail level. Even if you can live with the details being lost, the thing tends to be that it just won't look too good when something highly detailed is forced into smaller scale. You can always tell that there is something that you are supposed to be seeing but can't make out, and many things that look good in larger size easily become an utter mess when zoomed out enough. I think Tom's Heimur world map is a good example of a very low detail overview map that looks great and most likely wasn't an insane amount of work to put together. I personally think it's better to focus on getting the one singular map to work in its own intended scale, without trying to make a it be everything at once. You can always make several maps if you need something else. In my experience, it's often faster to just do two, than put a lot of effort into trying to make the first one work in all shapes and sizes.

This is obviously just my take on this, so you do what you feel is best I will most certainly applaud you if you are able to see this through! At least I was never able to work out how to get this thing to work, but maybe you will. I'm eager to see what kind of style you settle on.

[Llannagh]

OKay, now, that took me longer than I'd hoped for. Had to wrestle with Photoshopwhich I hadn't used in a while and they have changed things quite a bit.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback!

@JEdward, I hope you'll get to see at least something finished, this time! I know I have started working on this project many times...

@Kellerica, I totally get your point. I guess I have expressed myself in a way that it seems that I would not want to work on the big map after piecing it together. The main reason for me to be going about this this way is to have a coherent overall basemap. I find it hard to work off of a big map and then get the mountainranges, for example, in the right place when doing a zoom-in. This way, I hope to get a big, coeherent map, albeit pretty messy. From that one I can then work towards a nice, big overview map.
Maybe I'm just too dumb to do it the other way.

So here is what I have come up with so far:



In this I incorporated a tutorial by Jonathan Roberts. I think he's also here on the forum, but I forgot his nickname here...
I put different textures underneath the different areas, and revealed those only pretty slightly. In the case of the mountains there's an overlay layer for the shadows and highlights, and on top of that I put a color layer.

So far I'm pretty satisfied with it, the workflow is not too complicated and I like the look (which is actually pretty similar to anything I have done before). I'll have to work on blending the edges of the textures, of course.
The plan now will be to outline the everything in linework and then do the rest.

Have a nice weekend everyone!

[J.Edward]

In this I incorporated a tutorial by Jonathan Roberts. I think he's also here on the forum, but I forgot his nickname here...

It looks very nice. I really like the color choices.
Jonathan is Torstan here on the Guild.

[Llannagh]

Thank you, J.Edward. And thank you for the reminder about Torstan!

I tried out some more with the above style, to see what it looks like in a complete map. And though it's not complete, I think it gives a good feeling:



I have to say that I'm not satisfied. It was a good thing to see it through to this point, since I think I have been too impatient in my earlier tryouts, but this is really not what I am looking for. At least I was able to work out a workflow for this that was pretty consistent and coherent. That's something I hadn't achieved yet.

As you might notice, for some of the hills I used a stamp-like brush. I have done this earlier, also with stamps for mountains:



I had totally forgotten about it, but now I remember that this felt really good, and was a fast and satisfactory way of outlining the geography. So I'm thinking I will use this technique to do all of those small maps, then piece it all together and see how I can make a readable, good overall map out of it.
As for the more "artsy" style I'm looking for, I was pretty satisfied with this one (it's on page two, on the bottom), though it was a ton of work with the mountains.

In the end, what I'd like to achieve is something along the lines of Viking's work, especially Arinthia. If I ever manage to produce something of that quality, I'll be satisfied.

Have a good to start into the coming week, everybody!