Thread: Dispatches From A Cartographer - Larithas visits the Darenko Empire

Another nice waterpainterly map HW

I do find that there are a few problems reading the text when it fades in and out depending on the background of the text. Also some of the positioning of the text makes it necessary to break off reading in order to find the place that it is talking about. (examples: the City of Darenko, Bardel and Margos) Fixing that would make the text a LOT easier to follow.

Nice work though

Thanks Korash, that's useful feedback. I'll be making some changes s soon as I have a spare minute. HW

Funnily enough I was going to go the other way and say that the text is too sharp. As you are trying to capture the text as being written onto the map and not printed on afterwards I think there needs to be different levels of fading and not just one level of opacity applied to the text layer. Any old text that has been around a while doesn't fade all at the same place, but there seems to be patches where the text looks faded more in some places than it does in other (I did a lot of referencing on my last CG Mapping Challenge for old books). The method I used was when I had all the text done then throw it into its own group (Photoshop) and apply a mask over the top and just brush over the text in areas with a large low opacity (10-20%) brush so that its faded in places but can still be read. Now I'll admit it still needs to be legible throughout so you need to pick and choose the places you do it, as Korash said it is dependent on the background.

Another thing I would perhaps try is trying flattening the text into one layer (duplicate the group) and using the Transform > Warp tool to pull the text around slightly so it isn't a consistently straight text. In some maps straight uniformed text is fine, but I think if you are trying to make it look realistic (with the stains, etc.) then go all in

The biggest part where this map falls down though is the compass rose, the use of the emboss tool doesn't look like an impression has been made into the paper as it's way too deep with those shadows. For my money I'd maybe try and recreate a blob of wax seal and put an impression into that if you want to go down that route with that effect.

More good advice. Thanks Yospeck. I wasn't too pleased with the text before, but in the interests of clarity, I didn't want to mess with it. Provided people take the time to read the text (which I really hope they do) it should still be readable.

You're right about the compass rose too, although I didn't notice till you mentioned it. Are there any good tutorials for wax seals? I saw Chel's royalty free one, but didn't want to use it because it's someone else's work (although it looked great when I gave it a trial run), and mine looks kinda plastic and fake.

Below is an updated version of the map. Let me know what you think, and any advice about the wax seal would be extremely useful.

- The Hoarse Whisperer