Four Isles of Malathia
So this was a testbed map for using a handdrawn/handpainted style following the John Roberts tutorials at http://www.fantasticmaps.com/. Also my first map using Corel Painter for the main physical geography. Labels done in the defunct Adobe Fireworks, which I love.
In terms of the setting, the labels are part of a homebrew RPG setting that I have never done anything with. The gist of it is . . . what would happen with a mashup of a traditional Chinese dynasty and the early modern Holy Roman Empire?
I had a lot of fun developing both the heraldry and the ideographic (?) glyphs for the imperial provinces, in Fireworks.
Hope you all enjoy this!
"The medium is the message." -- Marshall McLuhan
That's pretty cool! My one "complaint" would be that the forests could use some work...especially considering how different the mountain-style vs. the forest-style is (3d vs. 2d-ish etc.). I think the forests need a bit of "sculpting" to match the very nice mountains...all imo and ymmv etc. .
I do like the overall feel of the map though. And I'd love to know more about your setting (fellow rpg enthusiast here). Do you have some lore and/or history that you could share?
I'm trapped in Darkness,
Still I reach out for the Stars
I like the style here, especially the mountains. I don't really have a problem with the forests, I think they work fine as they are, but the other green areas. Is it supposed to represent something? I don't know if it looks different on different monitors, but on my end the hue is highly unnatural, and since there is no explanation as to what it stands for, I'm assuming it's supposed to be vegetation of some kind. If that is the case, I really don't think that particular shade works.
But aside from that, I think the map works well. Especially if this was a test into an unfamiliar style and using a new software. I really enjoy the heraldry too, something I always love seeing.
Good call on the other green areas - it is supposed to be grass. I played around A LOT with this. I am also red-green colorblind - so I am really almost literally flying blind on that part of the map. I also tried to texture those sections with a specific brush in Corel to make them more grass-like, but that probably is not enough of a clue.
If you were to try and improve those sections, what would you do? From your post, I'd guess desaturating those layers and drawing in some suggestive pen strokes to represent grass?
"The medium is the message." -- Marshall McLuhan
Apart from the grassy green areas, very nice map!
I particularly like the way you did the inlandsis in the top left.
Wow, damn... I had no idea.Originally Posted by Kingbreaker
Um. I honestly will have to say I don't quite know - I'm afraid I'm a bit too absorbed in my ways of just adjusting colours by eye. The areas do have an extremely high saturation that makes them stand out too strongly... So yeah, maybe try desaturating them, and maybe drop their opacity down a notch too. As for the pen strokes, a matter of personal taste, but I probably wouldn't on this scale.If you were to try and improve those sections, what would you do? From your post, I'd guess desaturating those layers and drawing in some suggestive pen strokes to represent grass?
Will try that. For green shades I literally look at the RGB values and shoot for what I think might work for normal people
"The medium is the message." -- Marshall McLuhan
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