My Very First Attempt
Well, as the title suggests, this is the first digital map I've ever attempted. I followed the Saderan tutorial that I found here. The whole thing came out a little more washed out than I was expecting, and I did have a few problems, but overall, I'm quite pleased with it as a first attempt. My biggest problem was with the forests. I wasn't getting a green color to them, despite following the tutorial closely and that layer being filled with an appropriate color. After quite a while trying to figure it out, I discovered it had something to do with the Pattern Overlay layer effect, and when I played with that, I was able to get some color. Not entirely sure what the issue was, but I ended with at least a passable result. My other problem is with the more western of my two rivers, which resembles a poorly drawn number 3. It seems there's an invisible line connecting my starting and ending points, and on the western banks of the river, but still east of that line, the land is lighter than the rest of the map. Not sure what happened there or how to deal with it. The biggest problem is the northern landmass. But that is entirely user error. I thought I had the image sized so that just about all of it was on my screen, but apparently that mass was just off the top. Since I thought it was all visible, I never scrolled up to see it, and therefore it pretty much just suffers from neglect. Ah well.
I'd love to hear what anyone has to say about this, including pointers and/or constructive criticism. I'll probably never go back to this map, since I created it purely for learning purposes, but would love to know ways to improve it.
Grats to th first digital map. It´s interessting how two aproaches to the same tut come out differently ( at least the ocean, that is the part I´m at ). In my opinion the coastline is a bit to strong. For the vegetation the image is to small to say something. With the western river clip the southern big curve and head straight to the bay. It will look much better.
Doesn't look to bad so far... Posting up a larger, higher-resolution image will give folks a chance to provide more in-depth C&C.
My Finished Maps | My Challenge Maps | Still poking around occasionally...
Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
I agree with SG. It looks good so far, but the image is too small to see very well.
I also have to caveat my response with "as far as I can see" :-) . The shaded relief is subtle but effective. What's the scale you have in mind? Northern landmass "neglected"... or a solid featureless ice sheet - I'm OK with that too.
Didn't realize the map got that small. The tutorial I followed suggested starting the file at 1024x1024 and later dropping it to half. I guess part of that was to keep things small and manageable for a basic tutorial. I've gone ahead and resized it back to 1024x1024. Hope that helps.
If you want a richer look, you could try a levels adjustment layer over the top of everything. Just move the center control (gamma) until you see something you like. Adjustment layers will essentially apply an image adjustment to everything beneath them, but they're completely nondestructive—you can tweak it or turn it off at any time.
Regarding that top area, just throw a label on it that says "Terra Incognita" and it's no longer a mistake!
Bryan Ray, visual effects artist
http://www.bryanray.name
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