The land of Andoria & Realm of Telrith - [unpaid] commission (WIP)

[jfrazierjr]

I hate to be a downer, but based on your previous statements, I don't know how well the trees will work. First, if he is drawing as he goes over time, you would have to almost certainly have to draw many many trees to account for uniqueness. On top of that since it appears he is doing this as he goes, he would likely be using different quills so slightly different line thicknesses as things fill in over months. Unless he is the super meticulous sort, he won't hand drawn several hundred trees when a general shape outline of the forest would let him keep track of the same information in a fraction of the time. Don't get me wrong, your last post is very pretty, but your second last likely is more like what an adventurer might do "in the field".


Just something to think about and perhaps ask the author more information about the character motives and patience level.

[Lukc]

Jfrazier has some good points - I just want to drop my 2 cents and so forth: I love your rivers. I think they're gorgeous. In the last post. One thing you should think about is painting over the coastline, so the river seems to flow into the Ocean.

Also, if I'm picking trees: I love the big fat pine trees.

[rpgmapmaker]

I really like the little bridges over the rivers at various points!

Perhaps one way to improve the forests would be to break up the uniformity of the trees? You could do it only slightly, but I think it would help with the hand drawn effect. I find it hard to believe that one person could draw the same little oval on top of the tree thousands of times... maybe make some of them a couple pixels wider, or taller, or having a bit shorter trunk? Just minute variations.

Edit: It also occured to me that the shading on your trees is not as complex as that on the hills or mountains - just a little line off the trunk. Maybe a very slight shade on the right side of the leaves could make them fit the rest of the symbols better?

Yes, you are right. Making several trees (icons) and getting them to look good together is hard... I am not sure if what I am doing this time will work. I guess I will let you all be the judge

The trees are still not as detailed as the mountains but adding some shading did help.

Some difference in the trees would definitly help. Have you tried to place them more sparsely?

The mountains are great though, looks like the classic copperplate engraving style of the 17th and 18th century. Maybe you should look towards these maps for some inspirations for the trees?

I did look at many 17th century maps and you are right that is where I found that mountain style... I went back and look at all of those maps again for trees and did not like much of what I found... most of the time there are little to no trees and most are spread way thin... i guess that was not that important back then... But it did make me realize that with this style less is more.

I really like the new trees. The only critique I would have about them is that the brush stroke you've used for them is pretty thick, so that when you combine them into forests the forests turn out really dark. If you used a thinner brush stroke for the trees this might help. Course, that would mean going back and redoing a bunch of work. So you have to decide for yourself how cost effective that would be.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

You have a good eye... I forgot to paste the layer style I was useing for the mountains on to the trees layer so they were still dark. it does not matter now as I did redo everything... but it ended up not being as much work as I thought. I mad a seamless texture of the tree icons 200 X 200 pix and then just cut that into the shapes for the forests... and cut some here are there from the inside too. Quite a time saver.

Forest_txt1.png
© C. M. Perry 2012

I hate to be a downer, but based on your previous statements, I don't know how well the trees will work. First, if he is drawing as he goes over time, you would have to almost certainly have to draw many many trees to account for uniqueness. On top of that since it appears he is doing this as he goes, he would likely be using different quills so slightly different line thicknesses as things fill in over months. Unless he is the super meticulous sort, he won't hand drawn several hundred trees when a general shape outline of the forest would let him keep track of the same information in a fraction of the time. Don't get me wrong, your last post is very pretty, but your second last likely is more like what an adventurer might do "in the field".


Just something to think about and perhaps ask the author more information about the character motives and patience level.

You are not a downer! You are correct that keeping in mind that before the great Photoshop when the pen was still mightier than the sward... it would have been a nightmare to do trees like that! I am still thinking about the Mass Forests vs. Tree Icons... no winner yet but for now I will stick to trying to make the icons work. I had not given that much thought to the number of quills a mapmaker would have used... but now that you say that... I also wonder if I should make more little mistakes, or should I say not correct some of the ones I already make to give the map a more "one try to get it right" look.

... I love your rivers. I think they're gorgeous. In the last post. One thing you should think about is painting over the coastline, so the river seems to flow into the Ocean.

Also, if I'm picking trees: I love the big fat pine trees.

I added some triangle trees just for you! Thanks for the tip on the river meets coastline... it looks much better now.

Here is the new test:
Test-3.jpg
© C. M. Perry 2012

Thanks to all of you for taking the time to post and help me! The map is already moving in a better direction.

-RPGMM

[jfrazierjr]

How did the customer like your Version 2 forests(first post)? I think something more blocked in would be closer to a character in the field's level of effort. Personally, I would think the mountains are a bit to perfect, but if the customer likes them, that's all that really matters.

Just in case your interested in playing with the technique, I have been playing around with the ink tool to make some mountains lately. This will give you a very hand drawn look since even with a tablet, it's quite hard to get the same pressure level each and every time and IMHO would do quite well in imitating a hand drawn look(of course that would mean you have to hand draw each mountain.... but then again... as CoyoteMax says: "...sometimes the most efficient way to make something look drawn by hand is to simply draw it by hand...") Unfortunately, my tests on my home computer were not saved since I had to reboot and could not save the tests... there were some messed up stuff there anyway, but it looked fairly promising.

[rpgmapmaker]

How did the customer like your Version 2 forests(first post)? ... I have been playing around with the ink tool to make some mountains lately. ... as CoyoteMax says: "...sometimes the most efficient way to make something look drawn by hand is to simply draw it by hand...").

The customer did like them but he seems to like the tree icons better. (I will try a test with the blocked out mass trees and the new mountains to see how it looks together).

The character in the story is not in the "field"... think more like bilbo baggins from the hobbit getting back from his adventure and making a map after many years of sitting at home. so the time to draw is not a problem.

I am interested in this ink tool? I will have to re-download GIMP and see what it is all about. I have tried several drawing programs that claim to have better brush tools but have not found anything I like.

-RPGMM

[Gidde]

I'll second the ink tool suggestion. It's probably the best way I've ever found to hand-draw with a tablet and make it look, well, like ink. The size to pressure link is better than any paintbrush tool i've used. It's also really sharp. I've been playing a lot with actual ink and dip pens, and the ink tool in gimp approximates it extremely well.

[jfrazierjr]

Here is about 20 minutes or so of work with the Ink Tool in GIMP. Note that I started with a 1024x768 image and used Torstan's parchment as a background. I then zoomed in to 400% and just played with what looked nice and zoomed every now and again.

One word of caution, the Ink tool WILL take some getting used to. Very slight pressure changes with your pen can make large jumps in the line width as can the pen "tip" chosen, speed, etc based upon the settings, so it will take some getting used to. I included the top which is a duplicate of the bottom and on the bottom layer I used a 50% grey layer set to overlay and just kind of swatched in some black/white to create the shadows here and there where I thought it might make sense (on the mountains) and just a bit randomly on the "ground" using the Paintbrush tool with a very fuzzy brush and pen dynamics set to pressure opacity. The only thing not done with the ink tool was the parchment texture(of course) and the highlights/shadows. All of the line work was with the Ink tool set to two different "sizes" and various pen pressure on my tablet.

Personally, I think the lines look nice and "smooth" and well.. inky....

[jbgibson]

Delightful stuff.

You've got a river acting badly. You've got to keep an eye on them at all times - cheeky things. Between v.1 and v.2 the Amberglow seems to have grown attached to whateveryacallit that empties into the ocean south of the Outland Forest and that nice waterfall.

[rpgmapmaker]

Gidde
I got myself a dip ink pen some time ago and never really got the hang of using it... after some practice I did end up with a few things I liked but I was mostly trying to use it for text not drawing...

jfrazierjr
That is a good 20 min! I have been playing with the ink tool in GIMP... I am sure that it is the best connection with the tablet's pen pressure I have seen yet! you are both right about it taking some getting use to though. I will keep working with it to see what comes of it. I think I will try and use it to make the city icons for the map. More to follow on that.

Delightful stuff.

You've got a river acting badly. You've got to keep an eye on them at all times - cheeky things. Between v.1 and v.2 the Amberglow seems to have grown attached to whateveryacallit that empties into the ocean south of the Outland Forest and that nice waterfall.

Wow... you are so right! That is a good catch... the client mentioned extending the river though the forest and I did not give it a second thought.

Here is where I am at right now. I have not had as much time to work on it in the last few days. I finished the mountain range and started placing the text. I made some new swards for the compass but have not finished... The file is large but I thought that a larger view of the world was in order this time. The corner might be to friendly for the Iron Age: Dawn of War... I will have to re-think that.

Test-4.jpg
© C. M. Perry 2012

There are somethings that need to go on the map that I am not sure how to "show" the tundra "snow land" is the main one. Any suggestions on how to hand draw an ice covered land are welcomed. in version one I just put some dirt on the ground and added some spikes but I am not sure that really looked icy.

Thanks again for all of your help so far

-RPGMM

[Crudus]

What is the region labeled Sabledain Basin meant to be? Some kind of swamp? I imagine something similar could work for tundra, except sparser and without grass. Of course, it's hard to show sparseness when your defaul grassy areas have nothing drawn in.

Without changing the color of the background for the tundra regions, I not sure how I would go about this myself. Maybe some kind of hatching around the outline of the tundra region?