Thread/Tutorial/Tips for a specific map style?

[Coyotemax]

Yes, practice practice practice.
That's probably the most frustrating part for me too. The style I'm ultimately heading for (and my thoughts on this change daily!) is I think something between Ascension's latest and the one you posted from Torstan. I keep wobbling back and forth, and I know what will happen is that eventually I'll end up with something that's in the same ballpark but still uniquely me.

If it helps any, my progression since starting mapping (for hand drawn look anyhow) is kind of like this:
Followed tutorials almost to the letter, and used copy/paste from already existing maps to get mountains, trees, and symbols.
Used other people's mountain and symbol brush packs
drew out my own mountains and turned them into brushes to use them, my style but still easier than drawing out by hand
Incorporated Fluesopp/Ramah's forest generator
Realized that the best way to make something look hand drawn is to draw out the whole thing
Got frustrated with very slowly progressing map since I'm drawing everything from scratch
Got extremely pleased with hand-drawn results and forced myself to keep doing it no matter how frustrating it is



Ascension's point about drawing at double size and shrinking the final piece does go a LONG way to turning those differences into a personalized look/style. Give it a shot, you'll be nicely surprised by the results.

[Preypacer]

Yes, practice practice practice.
That's probably the most frustrating part for me too. The style I'm ultimately heading for (and my thoughts on this change daily!) is I think something between Ascension's latest and the one you posted from Torstan. I keep wobbling back and forth, and I know what will happen is that eventually I'll end up with something that's in the same ballpark but still uniquely me.

If it helps any, my progression since starting mapping (for hand drawn look anyhow) is kind of like this:
Followed tutorials almost to the letter, and used copy/paste from already existing maps to get mountains, trees, and symbols.
Used other people's mountain and symbol brush packs
drew out my own mountains and turned them into brushes to use them, my style but still easier than drawing out by hand
Incorporated Fluesopp/Ramah's forest generator
Realized that the best way to make something look hand drawn is to draw out the whole thing
Got frustrated with very slowly progressing map since I'm drawing everything from scratch
Got extremely pleased with hand-drawn results and forced myself to keep doing it no matter how frustrating it is



Ascension's point about drawing at double size and shrinking the final piece does go a LONG way to turning those differences into a personalized look/style. Give it a shot, you'll be nicely surprised by the results.

Indeed... Though I gotta say, it's frustrating to me, having spent so much time on this one map (days worth of time, easily), and all I'm still left with is the base map, no different than what I posted on these forums some time ago. I can't even get a darn cliff to look good, yet there are people on here who seem to crank out amazing looking and highly detailed maps every few weeks.

I'm usually really good at shading, and have many years of experience in PS... For some reason, though I just cannot get anything to look good on this map. At all. Everything I lay down, no matter how much time I spend on it, just looks terrible... It looks completely out-of-place, like it doesn't belong there. I can't get it to blend.

Ugh. I'm a big believer in "try and try again..." but in this case, for some reason, I might just have to admit defeat and give up on the cartography thing. It's becoming more and more discouraging every time I spend an hour or more trying to lay down a small area of terrain, only to erase it all and shut down PS in frustration.

I don't know if I'm just being my own worst critic or what, but nothing I do is coming out even remotely the way I intend it to.

Anyway... not trying to go too negative here. I'm just really aggravated at myself right now, because I've done things far more difficult than this in PS before, and they came out fine. I don't know why this one task - creating one decent looking cliff area - is proving to be so difficult.

Ah well.