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Thread: sketchy charcoal

  1. #11
    Community Leader Facebook Connected Ascension's Avatar
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    If you are going to use stylized brushes for forests you should use the same for mountains and other terrain features. I know that doing forests in the previous method doesn't look all that great with this particular style but for this type of map you can just use dark color blobs for forests and not worry about making sure that they seem 3d. This style combines faux shaded relief with a monochrome sepia tone so trees and swamps and plains don't need 3d relief - just mountains, hills, craters, and canyons...maybe river valleys but maybe not. I dig what you are doing here, though, and I like the very first one the most.
    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.
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  2. #12
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    That was my idea, relief effect for, well, reliefs and "ink" (sepia) for everything else. I am not sure I understand why monochrome blobs would do better than stylised brushes. How would you do cities in that way?

    The first one, pseudo-charcoal is easier because there I am not aiming for raised paper and thus sketchy icons should not look out of place.

  3. #13
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    Mainly because you have 2 different styles clashing here - shaded relief and hand-drawn symbols. Shaded relief didn't really come around until the 19th century while hand-drawn symbols have been around since maps themselves. Generally, do it all one way or the other because rarely does a mish-mash work. It may work here, shrug, but I didn't want you to put a lot of effort into and then realize that you had to go back to the beginning and redo things. If you like it then keep at it. Just a bit of advice from your friendly neighborhood spidermapper.
    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

  4. #14
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    Sure, I did not mean to be rude. Just saying that, as compared to the relief-shading, a dark color blob is as much another style as an hand-drawn symbol.

  5. #15
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    This is an attempt to use the "charcoal" style to map another area of the Arya world/continent.
    The problem is that I am not able to replicate accurately, not even remotely, the geographical features as they are in Fractal Terrains. However, it is just to try the style. I used again some of StarRaven brushes, this time the sketchy ones. I still don't have a satisfactory way of doing forest (but this area is mostly desrt and chaparral, so...)

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  6. #16
    Community Leader Facebook Connected Steel General's Avatar
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    This looks quite good, really like the mountains.
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  7. #17
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    For some reason my first mountains always look too dark to me.
    Here is another version, trying to follow a more closely the FT original.

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  9. #19
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    Trying a different forest

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  10. #20
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    I like the irregular forest-type the most. It goes pretty well with the overall style you chose.
    The forest in the north west is a bit too even for my taste and in the south you can clearly see the edges of your brush stroke

    All in all: Good job - it gets better and better

    >Moe
    If I stare at the country long enough
    I can prise it off the paper,
    lift it like a flap of skin.
    - Moniza Alvi, 1993 -

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