Small Volcano from a much bigger map commission

Since the requester of the map has gone dark on me I have put the project on hold indefinitely but I wanted to share a bit of it. I figure since they have not responded to anything lately and there isn't much else I can do with the thing I have to chalk it up to practice. It's too bad really as I think it was coming along pretty well. Lots left to do but oh well.

So this is from a little corner of the map (roughly 1/120th of the entire map) of which the entire is very much WIP. I was pretty happy with how it this little island was looking so far. I'll have to remember the technique for my next map I guess.

Anyway here it is.

That's great!
Though I managed to draw a decent volcano, I couldn't make the lava inside it convincing- Also, I love the smoke coming out of the caldera.
Great colors, it's a pity the requester has gone dark... :(

Maybe some rep will cheer you up! :D

Thanks Morgan. Hopefully they will pop back up. Hopefully nothing terrible happened but until then I have to move on to other projects.

Here is another area on the map that seemed to be going pretty well. I'm interested in how the mountains turned out and would be happy to hear thoughts on them. I think I'm going to use the method again so if there is anything I can do to make them better.

I really liked. Water is exceptional.

I just had a story just to see.

i like them too.

fyi, not that i expect it has much bearing. i'm a coder, not a gamer. i keep brightness and contrast on my monitor waaay down. 100% lowest settings.

i have several schemes i use for my display so that i can see things other people create and assess how other people will see what i create. i had to use the brightest setting ('nuclear holocaust') to see your maps. at my normal setting ('save my orbs while i pore through page after page of text') your maps are pretty much flat black :)

Flat black? Holy cow! I use two monitors and while they both look a bit different unless I tune them to be almost the same I don't have this happen. I do kind of like dark maps but I don't want them to be so dark the details are lost. Is anyone else having this problem with my maps and is it just these posts or all of my stuff?

I'm not up on how to tune my monitor for worldwide viewing so if anyone has a good link on this let me know. Thanks again for your input.

this is by no means a convention, something i cooked up myself because i deal with this issue frequently making GUIs :)

http://www.xoxos.net/images/calibrate.gif

at least it lets you know how much of either end of the scale is indicernible with your current settings. most of my guis tend to be light colours that blast people's eyes.. the only people i know who use settings like mine are also code oriented.

you're obviously not a novice, and it's something that most people never seem to consider. the only way i've been able to get a feel for 'median' settings is end user comments, other peoples' material.. i'd go crazy sitting in front of most people's monitors for more than a few minutes :)