Marisia

[Moombles]

Hopefully I'm posting this in the right place!

I started using photoshop for the first time at the weekend so this has been a really steep learning curve for me. Basically I just wanted a rough map to help me with my writing but having spent some time on this forum over the last few days started to feel a bit more inspired to create something that looked a bit prettier than just a few scribbles. My artistic tendencies only stretch as far as matchstick people so this has been somewhat of a challenge to me and also eye opening in that I've discovered you don't need to be particularly artistic or talented to create some nice looking work - you just need a bit of imagination.

This map is for the first place encountered in the book I am working on, it is a relatively small country with an even climate. It is very much a work in progress while I start to get to grip with various techniques and so I don't expect the finished version to look very much like this at all. Prime example of my newbie mistakes is that I only realised a few hours ago that every time I make a new layer, I probably shouldn't do it by copying the work I've already done (so that's how layers work!! lol).

I'm really enjoying working on this and this site is a fantastic resource.

So, here is the beginnings of Marisia - please be gentle with me as it's all one big experiment at the moment

[Diamond]

All I can say is it looks pretty darned good for a first attempt! Your hills/mts are nifty looking.

[Moombles]

Thanks for the feedback Diamond - I used Flawedspirit's tutorial on Land/Mountain texture

[arsheesh]

I agree with Diamond, a very nice start. One thing that I would recommend would be to turn down the opacity on the sea texture layer: it's a bit bumpy. Otherwise it's looking pretty good.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Lalaithion]

try putting a layer of light blue/dark blue clouds over the ocean, putting it on overlay, and turning down the opacity.

[Moombles]

Thanks for the feedback guys - especially the tips on the ocean. I had just played about with the background when starting out and not really bothered with is since as I was concentrating on the land mass but it was definitely something I wanted to fix up before finishing it as it's pretty ugly lol

I did put up a reply yesterday but it got held up for moderation, probably because there was a link in it. I was basically saying that I had used Flawedspirit's tutorial on land and mountain texture to get that effect.