Thread: developing a style

Originally Posted by spiderfate

ive been doing the tutorials on zombienirvana for photoshop fantasy mapping. this is what i have so far, im currently working on mountain brushes

Good start, I look forward to seeing more. Any chance of just sinking the time into doing each mountain individually instead of using brushes? I feel that it gives much more character in the end, but of course, it depends on the style of map you are looking for too...

if i had a tablet i would but i cant draw at all with the mouse

I can't draw with the mouse at all either. I found a brush on Deviant Art that had a look of hand-drawn mountains for my maps, since they are largely hand-drawn. It was made for Gimp but I think she had people owrking on making it for other programs too.

here ive added a mountain and swamp layers. not so happy with results. the mountain and swamp layers are bootleged just so i could see how it would look.

Try a brown color overlay for the mtns, might make them look more subtle. The swamps are okay except for that light green base which provides a hard edge...set the blend of the layer to multiply and that will weed out the lighter green but it will make the lil ferny things darker, so again try a color overlay.

Perhaps try taking a blur or smudge brush to the edge of the colour areas you've got to blend them in with the rest of the map. Also, perhaps try using larger icons more spaced out. At the moment your mountains look very crowded.

Otherwise this is coming on nicely. Definitely stick with it.

I like the look of the swamps just fine.

The mountains, I agree, might need some more work. Real mountain ranges tend to form long chains along fault lines, so the little clumps of mountains here and there are a little odd. Also, they tend to have a few layers, with a high elevation spine in the middle, moving to lower mountains and foothills towards the edges. I'd say the hills at the top look fine, the little chains are ok but might should line up a bit more, and the thing in the middle is very odd.

Still, great starting map and keep up the good work. I really enjoyed the zombie nirvana tutorial.

The blur on the mountains does not fit with the jagged coastline... there are also some weird looking ranges but if this is fantasy it shouldn't matter too much.

well i dumped those other mountain, i just wasnt feeling it. the farest on the other hand is the direction i think im going in. not sure again about new mountains