Kingdom of Braegor

[TheRedEpic]

Nice map, what program did you finish it in?

[The Cartographist]

Really like the map. The symbols are effective; the names are better than I've seen in a lot of home-brew worlds; and the history provides some helpful context.

Couple of thoughts:
1. Have you considered taking the same map and making other versions with other important information such as political boundaries, major sea lanes or predominant racial make-up, etc.? Since you've obviously thought about those types of things, I think that they can be very easily and helpfully added to the map.
2. My own personal bias: I think deeper, darker colors looks better on fantasy maps than the lighter tones. But yours is still very effective.

[landorl]

The map is hand drawn with pencil and paper, then scanned as b/w and colored in Photoshop.

This is the first of a series of maps covering the NE section of a continent in my world. (the fantasy one, not the one I live on).

I am working on the next map, the country of Gibeon which is immediately NW of Braegor, and a strong ally.

As for racial makeup, on Braegor, there is little other than humans, and the island is one complete kingdom.

[Fister]

This is the type of map I would spend considerable time pouring over as a PC, learning each name, studying terrain features, analyzing trade routes, and imagining how the geography would effect the life of the inhabitants. I hope your PCs are as duly impressed as I am.

[Slade]

I too am using a hand drawn map, and just coloring it with photoshop. What process did you use? Myself, I just turned it into an outline, then did a little cheap outlining and filling. Giving me a mediocre product.

But what you have, is really great. I look forward to seeing more maps!

[Airith]

Could I ask how you did your trees/forests? If it's your secret some hints? Your map is my ideal map really (style), I've looked at yours a lot whenever I view another map.

[landorl]

I used a lot of layers. Each different color is on its own layer, and stacked on top of each other. I did this to make it somewhat easier to edit.

My basic process was to draw the map and then scan it. I only drew the coastline, hills, mountains and ridges. The woodlands and rivers were added in photoshop. I scanned it and then converted it to a b/w drawing.(I guess you could scan as b/w also)

After I scanned it, I used the magic eraser tool to remove all of the "white" area leaving only the drawings. I then duplicated the layer 2x. One I named "coastline" and the other I called "mountains outlines". On the Coastline layer I deleted all of the mountains, and on the "Mountains Outline" layer I deleted the coastline. I also added a color overlay to each layer to change the color to what I wanted them to be.

I then started adding all of my background colors and shading. My trees are a brush shape that I use, and I rather like the output.

I am zipping the template and brushes and attaching here. I have all of my layers set with the effects that I use for each one. The font that I used was Sherwood which comes with either Windows or Word (Can't remember which)