Reply With QuoteOnce again you've done it, great work dear sir. I do however have one nit to pick. Its very likely that this is just me but I'm thinking that the light blue coastline contrasts a bit too much with the earthy tones of the land.
-D-
Aalder
The mad scientist strikes again. I've been experimenting with a more painterly style; slowly but surely moving away from digital-looking. I've whipped this up in about 12 hours and I think it looks pretty cool. I've still got a ways to go with finishing up the labeling and then the finish work but it's time to get something to eat and watch some football.
~A~
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
Once again you've done it, great work dear sir. I do however have one nit to pick. Its very likely that this is just me but I'm thinking that the light blue coastline contrasts a bit too much with the earthy tones of the land.
-D-
People come and people go. I walk amongst them, I see their faces; but none see mine. I pass them in the streets but nary a glance is spared my way, for what interest would they have in a Wanderer? Not of this world... Forever Alone... Forever Wandering... LoneWandererD...
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RIP Angel "Ingy" Yates - The first inspiration that guided me towards art. You will be missed...
ooooh that is gorgeous! Love the colors and fonts you used. Lots of style!
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TomCardin
The things I really like;
1) Mountains - they look great
2) Overall color scheme - though I agree with LoneWandererD about the bright teal
Things that 'don't work for me';
1) Forests - they seem to get lost in the terrain
2) Fonts - Even though it looks like a hand written font, it still seems to 'perfect'. Love the title font though
My Finished Maps | My Challenge Maps | Still poking around occasionally...
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I love those mountains, and the color/texture of the desert. Not too sure about the hills though, they look too ... sharp? ridge-y? I can't put my finger on it.
Gidde's just zis girl, you know?
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My tutorials: Textured forests in GIMP, Hand-Drawn Mapping for the Artistically Challenged
Lots of terrain tweaks. Also is a tweak that I have used in the past, and am resurrecting, for mountains. Using the tablet (you could use the mouse combined with the smudge tool for tapering the ends) I draw some ridge lines then emboss them. The emboss is set to soft light and multiply, 40 pixels, with a contour of Gaussian (not gloss contour). Then set the layer's fill at 50% and opacity at 75%. The second image shows what it looks like on a 50% gray background. I changed my roads to look like wagon tracks and added some shadows for the cities. Might need to go a skosh more on toning down the aqua color around the coast.
Last edited by Ascension; 10-26-2009 at 12:22 PM.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
Looking pretty good. I like the ridgeline technique. Your city icons are cool...even though they're pretty simple I think they look nice. Agree that the forests are a bit hard to read as such. This reminds me (palette, shape) of a "painterly" map I just saw somewhere...maybe as an example in the request forum or something. I liked that map, so that's a good thing
M
[edit]Repped...in appreciation for your constant search for new, cool styles[/edit]
Last edited by mearrin69; 10-26-2009 at 12:35 PM.
Mearrin, I think the one you're thinking of is Albion (the Fable II map); it reminds me a bit of that too.
Love the ridgelines, thanks for the tip on creating them. I've been looking for a way to do that without spending days on it. The city icons look very exotic and cool.
Gidde's just zis girl, you know?
My finished maps | My deviantART gallery
My tutorials: Textured forests in GIMP, Hand-Drawn Mapping for the Artistically Challenged
The lil city icons are a brush and I think I got them here, don't remember. Anywho, they're just lines so I backfilled the empty space with stuff to make them stand out. I then flipped each lil section of this (can't flip the whole layer) and colored it black then skewed each section (can't skew the whole layer) for a shadow.
The Albion is exactly it. I've seen it requested here twice in the past month so I figured I should try to do something more painterly - which I've been moving towards anyway. Albion appears to have satellite mountains chopped and composited in so I went with my own techniques. There's a pattern here of satellite mountains and I tried that but didn't like the results. The forest is a pattern, too, but with my own colors and then given a textured bevel. If you want to look for the brush and the patterns they're probably in the Resources section somewhere.
Mostly, this map is a bunch of color layers with masks that are grunged up to show/hide colors in various places. Kinda fun and easy to play with and significantly faster than what I usually do - but since I tend to be perfectionistic the time is creeping back up...all in all I'd guess about 20 hours so far but redoing this same style would be much lower since I don't have to experiment anymore. I'm hoping to wrap it up by the end of the day cuz I finally got a day off (21 straight days finishing an entryway for some big muckety-muck's house) - so I ate Sir Robin's minstrels; and there was much rejoicing, yay.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
I for one love the bright teal coastlines! I'm not an expert, that's just my gut - It looks Kool!
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