I like it so far, and I want to see what your going to do with it.
Long time no post. I had serious computer troubles earlier this year which interfered with my cartography, and it really put me off using Photoshop for a long time. I've only just gotten back into using it the past few months, and now I've gotten back into cartography. I've attached to this post an island I've just started working on, although I've left out the scale for now - I'm looking at ~500 miles from west to east, from one side of the island to the other (not from one side of the image to the other). Hopefully the images attached in the order of my current progress.
I've run into some difficulties deciding between the last three since there is the possibility of having part of the island split off and acting as an island itself; add to that some additional islands and I could have an archipelago. I do plan on looking at the surrounding continents soon, and the tectonic boundaries. This archipelago is going to be akin to Italy or Japan - quite varied terrain, with various mountain ranges and it'll come with it's very own volcanoes too.
I will admit to lots of tracing in Photoshop, taking outlines of various real world coastlines and seeing how they'd fit in with my overall vision. The end result is obviously very different from the coastlines I've traced around. I prefer real world examples to guide me in the process, although there are some oddly shaped islands out there.
Last edited by Kaidonni; 12-02-2013 at 05:31 PM.
I like it so far, and I want to see what your going to do with it.
I prefer The last version with extra island, overall it looks like a dagger but more island would Be interesting to see where you heading.
Off to a great start! Looking forward to seeing more.
Cheers,
-Arsheesh
I just realised that this was supposed to go in the Regional/World Mapping Forum. It's been a while since I last posted, so I got the forums mixed up a bit. If a moderator could move this thread to the appropriate forum, it would be appreciated; also, sorry for the inconvenience.
Thanks for the replies. At the moment, I'm unsatisfied with the small island because it fits too neatly with the rest (partly because it's based off the land that was directly connected). I'll have to do something about that for certain. My ultimate goal is to not only have various maps of this archipelago, but also to create the surrounding landmasses, although that will require me to go to a larger scale to achieve it.
I've blown the size of the map up and started working in greater detail, although I think I may have gone a little overboard on that. At this point I think working with smaller and smaller details is appropriate; the smaller maps could only get me so far. I will have to PM a moderator to get this moved to the correct forum, as this is really Regional/World Mapping.
[thread moved at posters request]
-RobA>
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Not much of an update, just added in the scale. I'm stuck for where to add the smaller islands, and I'm thinking there will be a subduction zone running between the two islands, with the direction of the lower plate moving north/north-west. The larger main island is essentially an equivalent to Italy or Japan, with quite varied geography due to plate subduction. This is still very early in the design process, and I hope to actually refine the coastline quite a bit. I might go as detailed as possible, down to a 2 or 3 pixel brush.
Commendable and cute coast lines - a good sample for non computer generated coast lines, good proportions...
Agreed. It looks nice.
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