[WIP] The Dominions of the Monarchy of St. Peter (fantasy)

[ravells]

I think it looks great in b&w but am curious to see how the colour would work on it too!

[Lukc]

Of course it needs colour! Plus, it doesn't cost anything - it's just a few extra layers. Anyway, I'm calling it a day, since my eyes are going to fall out from staring at a screen so much. I've coloured the texts and laid down the basic colour areas. Then I went to town on the little helmet thingy and realised I'm too tired to continue, since I'm wasting time on rather unessential details instead of working bit by bit. So, to wrap off tonight, I made a few backup copies of the "ink layers" (i.e. the black and whites), another one of the coloured version, then slammed the layers together, resized, plastered a few quick textures, ctrl+E'd again and saved for web ... and the colour version still ended up at 1.77 MB

Anyhow, here it is ... the rough "concept" coloured version.

svetopetrograjska_v4_2000.jpg

Now to take a bit of a break, since tomorrow there'll be some actual "work" to do ... when I get to play with this next: painting in a bit of vegetation, water shading and some political boundaries. Hm. And then it's done I think, except for a wee bit of fiddling with the title and legend. Cool ... I actually suspect I only have about 3 more hours to work on this thing.

Note*: hmmm ... the more I look at this, the more I like the colours as they are ... maybe I'll skip the vegetation shading and just lightly indicate some political boundaries. I might even first do the border and then see if I feel like adding anymore colours.

[ravells]

OMG...that looks yummy!

[Lukc]

svetopetrograjska_v5_800.jpg

Oh goodness! What happened?

Ah, the first draft of the political boundary layer

[Lukc]

svetopetrograjska_v5_2000.jpg

Well, here's a few more layers. Political boundaries and some shading for the land, water and details. I might tone all those layers down a bit more, though. Not sure yet. Next I have to decide whether to add a border (probably) and then ... well, then it's done. Just resize this mammoth (the full size .jpg is currently 50 MB while the .psd is 600 MB), slap on some "ageing texture" and it's good to go.

What do you all think? Too much shading?

Anyway, the big black bitch* is letting me know it's time for her walkie, so off I go.



(*female black great dane)

[ravells]

The shading looks perfect to me. Might be worth trying slightly more desaturated colours but maybe the ageing texture will have that effect anyway. Beautiful stuff!

[Lukc]

You know, that's exactly what I was thinking. Kill the saturation by 20-25% ...

[Lukc]

And ... it's done. I'm just not sure which I prefer - the horribly aged version is probably better for display:

svetopetrograjska_v5_dark_2000.jpg

While the somewhat "younger" version is definitely better for gaming use ... not to mention the black and white original.

svetopetrograjska_v5_light_2000.jpg

The textures that went into this included old paper, concrete and scraped canoes.

Now to decide which of these goes into "Finished Maps" - or does the thread get moved?

[Blaidd Drwg]

I first thought the map didn't need colouring (and I stand by that), but the coloured version is just awesome. I prefer #1, but you're right about what's most useful for gaming purposes.

Anyway, this deserves a reward. I'm drooling on my keyboard here.

[Lukc]

You know, you're right. The bw is also great ... which gives me a thought ... since I have all those layers stacked together it should be a matter of five minutes to do ...

svetopetrograjska_v5_bw_2000.jpg

And here it is, in glorious black and white, lightly textured (I couldn't help myself), with bordure and little fiddly bits.