*** July Challenge Voting: Clouds ***

[LindaJeanne]

Very difficult voting; great entries!

[maackey]

I figured since I've already spent hours ransacking through these maps looking for inspiration and ideas, I might as well vote on them.
I've included some critiques, feel free to ignore them: I'm extremely nit-picky and just had to get it out of my system >.>

- The Isle of Aedenis by vorropohaiah
the good: paper looks real, wonderful sense of immersion
the bad: someone tore the page!
the ugly: Aminastis' text doesn't look handwritten, its too uniform

- City State of Etheria by lostatsea
the good: sprawling city (with adjacent farmlands to boot!), excellent tree/mountain/sea texture work
the bad: fonts could perhaps be improved
the ugly: wood border is bland in comparison

- Clouds Rest by shepherd
the good: neat idea, beautiful artwork, well polished
the bad: walls along a sheer cliff...?
the ugly: ...

close runners up
- Deep Ruins by Chashio - (map isn't very clear) - beautiful style, I love the dragon
- Camulus by Seraphine_Harmonium (cracked border, round brush coast) - excellent geography aesthetic P.S. I'm stealing the flags on cities idea
- The shattered Realms of Altostratus by Schwarzkreuz (apparently not finished) - love the style
- The New Galilean Commwealth by Thurlor (wood texture, font) - 3d box reminds me of: http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=17834
- North Nimbus Sea by daemaree (the font) - zoomed 3d areas is a nice touch

[Tigon]

Chyogamsidyo Harbor by JB got my (only) vote... forgot that all three selections counted equally and needed to be done at the same time! DOH moment. Anyway, his was my first choice. I like the fact that the final image is still recognisably the initial cloud image, it's very clean and well executed and naval maps are uncommon.

[RjBeals]

The Isle of Aedenis by vorropohaiah - Love the line work here, and the in-thread tip about stroking the line with the spatter filter in photoshop. Genius.
Clouds Rest by shepherd - Great idea and execution. The iso style should fit in nicely around here.
The bridge of tears by Bogie - I just like this one. cracked bridge over lava river - nice artwork.

[vorropohaiah]

The giant crater is the caldera of an extinct super-volcano. In fact the whole island is the remains of the volcano.

ok cool. thanks for the reply

3. The Isle of Aedenis - vorropohaiah: it was simple yet elegant.

- The Isle of Aedenis by vorropohaiah
the good: paper looks real, wonderful sense of immersion
the bad: someone tore the page!
the ugly: Aminastis' text doesn't look handwritten, its too uniform

lol, thanks! i agree about that text. I went overboard with a duplicate layer trying to blur it to try and show ink soaked up by the paper, though it didn't quite work...next time, though

[Seraphine_Harmonium]

Just a general question about voting and these polls: How is it that the total voting percentages can come out to something like 280%?

[vorropohaiah]

my guess is they should total exactly 300% as each voter has 3 votes.

[Bogie]

There are at least 2 people who only cast 1 vote each. Sometimes people don't notice the post of # of votes allowed, or may only want to vote for 1 map.

[cereth]

I voted for Cloud's Rest, Deep Ruins, and The Isle of Aedenis. There were many, many good entries this month but I thought these three showed the most creativity. Vorropohaiah's map was a very simple map executed flawlessly. Great job everyone that participated!

[Schwarzkreuz]

I am cursed and will never finished a challenge
At least my mountains are quiet in the Run without me : DDD