The Great Rift

[Eilathen]

... I started this just as a 'map map' (I know what you mean)...

... but the more I work on it, the more ideas I get for it. I've started jotting down some notes, and I'll post them when I put up the finished map...

Cool. Looking forward to it.
And if i might be so bold - would you be willing to share the finished psd-file? The lay of the land really fits with what i envision for a certain manhwa (korean comic) inspired game i wanted to play (for the curious: i read Chunchu and i liked the underlying story of it. But as so often the case, comic-artists do not bother with providing maps for their worlds...which is kind of a shame imho).

Oh and rep-d.

[tilt]

yep yep.. I, as always, respect your choices - even the drunken and tired ones *lol* ... and remember there are to kinds of alignment - "mathematical" and "optical"
And get on with that map - my exam is done and I'm ready to critique

[arsheesh]

Diamond this map is simply stunning! First off, I love the way that you have narrowly framed the map. The eye is drawn inward to the center of the piece. Second, you've done just a wonderful job on those mountains and rivers. I'm definitely going to keep my eyes on this one.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Diamond]

I think I nailed down the forests; like I said earlier, this is a pretty dry place, so there's not many forests to begin with. Do they look subtle enough? Too subtle?

Also added in the rest of the cities (the ones that will be shown, anyway), some more names, and two big-ass bridges across the Rift.

[pasis]

In my opinion the forests are bit too subtle and transparent. Could you add a bit more body to them keeping the texture size in its minimum and post a sample? I ask it because it could well be that stronger forest is a bad choice (but I would like to see it myself ). Anyway even as this is now it is really great.

[Diamond]

I'll work on it tomorrow after I get home from work; too late and too tired to do much tonight. Right now all the forests are are pattern-stamped, and the layer's blend mode changed to soft light; I wonder if I put a drop shadow in there how that would look...

Thanks for the words of encouragement.

[pasis]

I would not recommend drop shadow as the forests should not have one in this scale. But if you try it, dropshadow should be kept very small. For blending mode, try using multiply and add a new adjustment layer (exposure as multiply will make the forest too dark) on top of your forest and make it as clipping mask to affect only the forest layer.

[tilt]

agree with pasis - the forest is a bit to subtle... and I'm not sure about the bridges - I liked the idea you had with the ballons and perhaps brave sea captains. And with seas like that, building such huge bridges would be almost impossible (especially some with width like a town)... So, if there should be bridges, I think they are made by magic, which could make them thin (but strong) and even then all the magicians of the land gathered to create them - perhaps eons ago... or you could have a bridge made by an earlier civilization, but now broken down due to weather and wear...

[Diamond]

Hmm. I just noticed something weird, tilt. When I view the city icons on my home computer, the one I created them on, they look perfectly spherical. But on my work PC, they DO look slightly egg-shaped, narrower horizontally than they are vertically.

[jwbjerk]

Hmm. I just noticed something weird, tilt. When I view the city icons on my home computer, the one I created them on, they look perfectly spherical. But on my work PC, they DO look slightly egg-shaped, narrower horizontally than they are vertically.

Sounds like your two monitors have different aspect ratios. In other words one of these monitors has pixels that are more rectangular than square --- at least at your current resolution settings.

If you can't fix this by adjusting your resolution, or you don't want to change your resolution, in newer versions of photoshop you can make the display it compensate for non-square pixels.

It's under the View menu: Pixel aspect ration