World map (WIP) and region map !

[Laelonys]

Hi there ! Lil' french gal here to deliver you some of 'dem maps !

On a more serious tone, I've recently delved into the marvelous complex world of mapmaking for a WoW campaign I was making with a friend of mine, set into the county of Hautelande. The map was finished around November of 2017 and the campaign started soon after. I had of lot of cool WIPs for it, sadly my computer sorta died early 2018 and I lost a ton of raw files and screenshots :(

NB : I hand draw everything (except fonts of course) on Paint Tool Sai with an Huion H610PRO tablet. Some layer effects were achieved on Photoshop or Gimp, but that's pretty much it.

So here, have some blurry WIPs and a blurry finish because I lost the original, yay :


The main city's first hand sketch, with some wax seals and a lil' banner (both of my character's families).


The city of Hautelande, Mont-Clos, humble beginning. Note the ugly green. To make the basic map layout and to get the colours afterwards (since I suck at finding natural colors), I got help from Inkarnate.

Opting for a sorta (sorta) isometric style, I quite painstakingly did every house. Later on, I cheated and copy-pasted some lineart from already existing bunches for other small cities.


Much better ! I got around to some much better colors, more neutral, and started coloring / shading the houses, again just.. one by one. It took some time. Especially since the in-game nature of a WoW campaign really did require such detail, since the used location looked nothing like the drawing. It was still a really fun project ! :D


Extra blurry, but you can guess the scale of it. Copy-pasted some bunches here already, just because it took so long. Added some little farms as well ! Note here that the map is absolutely not to scale.


Aaand.. the finished product ! Really sadly don't have WIPs for this one, but I can give you a run-down :
- After laying down the basic locations, from my Inkarnate map, I got around to make the land lineart, using my infamous hand jiggle technique for some nice edges.
- Made some cool rocks, some nice mountains, and put down some very basic block colors. Hills too, all that jazz. A lot of the hills lineart / some mountains were later refined, the coast and roads as well (who were slightly erased for that more natural feel).
- Started on the cities sketches, only the capital first. Modified the colors bit by bit, finally changing it entirely to more muted tones, which worked much better.
- After that it's kind of a blur since I worked simultaneously on the cities and the colors, constantly tweeking it here and there.
- Trees were added later on, to fill the quite empy space. The smallest since are simply copy-pasted from small chunks of the capital. The eastern city was also finished last, since the dark effect was remade a couple of times.

_____________________________

Now fast forward a few months, aka May of 2018, and I give in to the urge to make my own DnD inspired campaign for a few friends of mine. Not wanting to start from scratch, I decide that it will firstly take place in Hautelande ! I already got the characters, locations, it's gonna be a breeze. I even made of little player-usable version with a lot less detail and a more paper feel. (in Gimp this time)





Except no because I very recently decided (ergo less than a week ago) to make a gigantic world map for what is sure to become quite a mess of a campaign.

Don't have a lot of WIPs because I'm working quite fast and don't think to keep some.

It first started with this really lovely site : https://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-Generator/
Fantastic for creating some coastlines, islands, continents, different countries, etc... really really great !!

So then, it turned into this basic thing :


Once again I jiggled, taking and adding to what I found interesting in the generator. I pretty much followed the guidelines for the country separators.


I placed the different factions (Dwarf, Elf, Human, etc...) in little bunches, hoping to be somewhat logical in my placement. I already placed a basic sea at that point but I can't show it since it really changed since then.


Now we're talking ! After trying for a long time to incorporte heightmaps in the "info" map, I just scrapped that and started a realistic version, using two layers : a black and white one for most of the actual height stuff, allowing to easily darken / lighten an area without reworking the colors, and an Overlay layer with the colors on. At that point the map already has quite a lot of hours put into it (I've got alot of free time)


Aaaand here we are ! It's not fully completed in my eyes, I still want to tweek it, there's some islands that need working, etc.. but the main continent is pretty much done. I'm not good with terrain, at all, a lot of it is pure luck combining the b&w layer and the color of my very textured brush, that gives it this varied look. The purple bits are helped by two Overlay layers (remember me sucking with colors), one above the sea layer and one above the land layer.

I'm not really happy with how the land is sort of.. "resting" on the sea ? If that makes sense ? It looks too separated. Also, I still need to find a name...

I still need to continue the Info Map, with all the cities, burgs, names, etc... This is such a fun project :D

[Narc]

Encore un français !
Bienvenue Laelonys.
Ta ville de Mont-Clos est magnifique

[Laelonys]

Hehe oui encore un, merci beaucoup !

[aeshnidae]

Very nice perspective on your towns! The buildings are lovely.