[WIP] Hand-drawn map features

[Gidde]

Now that is a very good mountain! The texture looks awesome, the bottom looks great, the shading looks good. The lone line in the center of the bottom looks a little strange, but I'm not sure what's bugging me about it. Tiny nitpick there though, it doesn't really take away from the whole.

Oh! forgot something. You've got your shadows getting deeper further down the mountain, which actually looks ok to me. However, I read an article once on swiss shading (someone linked to it here but I have no earthly idea where it is) that stressed that shadows should be darkest near the peak and lighten as you go down. I honestly don't know why that is, but you may want to give it a shot and see how it looks. And maybe someone who understands lighting and shadows better than I do could enlighten us as to why they'd say to do it that way?

[Morgan]

Now that is a very good mountain! The texture looks awesome, the bottom looks great, the shading looks good. The lone line in the center of the bottom looks a little strange, but I'm not sure what's bugging me about it. Tiny nitpick there though, it doesn't really take away from the whole.

Oh! forgot something. You've got your shadows getting deeper further down the mountain, which actually looks ok to me. However, I read an article once on swiss shading (someone linked to it here but I have no earthly idea where it is) that stressed that shadows should be darkest near the peak and lighten as you go down. I honestly don't know why that is, but you may want to give it a shot and see how it looks. And maybe someone who understands lighting and shadows better than I do could enlighten us as to why they'd say to do it that way?

I missed your post while I was writing my looooong monologue!
In that version I added a drop shadow effect on the highlight layer, and I'm quite happy with it, but I think I have to use larger brushes to reduce complexity.
I'll have to try what you say, I can imagine the reason for the darker shadow on the peak is that there is more light there, thus shadow is darker. On the vales there's less direct sunlight, so less dark shadows, but more gloom.
Don't know if I made it clear, but think about a candle: if you put an object near the flame, shadows are darker near the object, an then become lighter because they merge in the general illumination of the room.
Example:

Here you see how the nose's shadow are thicker (near the flame), while on the cheeks they are more morbid.