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Good start so far with the usual Vellum's touch! Keep up the good work
hand drawn archipelago
Just another doodle here to play with stuff. No background material with this one. I ended up not liking the outer islands off the large island on the lower left. Screwed up the compass rose by not paying attention to what I was doing!! No real scale thought out. Don’t like the borders, if I continue this one I’ll probably have a changing border pattern to work out something I may like to reuse. The marsh / swamp area was intended to be a connection link between ocean bodies north and south, with marsh lake areas suitable for pirate hides, lizardmen villages, and other out of the way remote areas etc. The interior “bay” is supposed to be shallow water area, think a little deeper than the florida keys. As you can see I haven’t completed this one at all, don’t know if I will. Thought I would post ‘er up even tho this one has been a hard motivational issue for me.
Comments and suggestions on this are always welcome. As a matter of fact how about addressing how you kick start the motivational issues when you run into them!! Well I kinda know how I’m gonna address this particular motivational issue, the wife says we are tearing out the kitchen!! So I may be sparse here for a bit LOL!!
archipelago.jpg
Good start so far with the usual Vellum's touch! Keep up the good work
That is a lot of marsh! Or fen. Or whatever. I always have to remind myself of the differences between a bog/marsh/fen/swamp.
So are the lizardfolk organised or more tribal? Do they have their own "heraldry" or something similar? As it is such a dominant feature on the map I wonder if it could be incorporated too somehow like your heraldic shields are.
Y'know, in a way, I kind of like that compass rose better than if it was perfect. This one's got character and looks cool.
I think overall this map has a lot of potential; it's got a sort of Spanish Main vibe to it already. Don't discard it completely! If you're feeling less than motivated work on something else, but don't forget this one.
I think the whole point of drawing by hand is to create something that does not look perfect, and that gives it more integrity/realism. So yeah, this compass rose definitely has character, as does the border (one of my favourite bits). I didn't think of the Spanish main until Diamond mentioned it, but now, that idea really suits it.
There's something about the swamp. It looks good, but somehow wrong. It might be that swamps usually form along major rivers (I think)? or the fact that it ends rather abruptly (maybe stretch it along the coast for a while, so that it becomes really elongated)? or maybe something to do with all of those streams?
Like Diamond says, though, keep it up.
As for motivation, I've found that I make my best maps (and enjoy it the most) when there's some kind of story to tell. Otherwise you're just making pretty scribbles which have no practical function. That's why I invented Larithas Stone, to tell a story through maps. I don't know how you use these/why you draw them, but maybe this approach will give you that boost you're asking about.
I like that map. I just had to look very closely to get the error on the rose.
So yeah, put it aside, make your wife a nice kitchen, than come back and do it.
Motivation: Listen to your most liked music while drawing.
Well the spanish main idea (I guess I need to get rid of the viking ship)is kind of interesting, cause while I was playing with the swamp thing LOL I did think of Jean LaFitte
. I the marsh / swamp / fen edge abruptness is something that bothered me and I will address this in two additional ways. 1. I will extend it outward in the nw / se direction to a more random outline. 2. I need to address the water inlet source issue which is missing at this point but I think I will add mountain / hill ranges also in the nw / se direction to get some flow lines for a major water source in both directions. Another thing which bothers me is the "relative straight line issue of the swamp coast lines. When I googled some sat shots of the florida everglades there where alot of projections out to barrier islands so to speak, which i have none of. This might be hard to "tweek" at this point.
Lizardmen heraldry? A croc maybe LOL I'll see if I can come up with something.
Kitchen update, man am I sore and all I did was empty cabinets and a closet to put all the crap yesterday LOL
Last edited by Vellum; 01-29-2013 at 11:26 AM.
Very small update, trying to get 15 minutes here and there while working on the kitchen. Kitchen is killing me, gonna need a vacation after its over LOL. I thought about drawing a map of the kitchen progress on the back side of a door, wife nixed the idea! Anyways added tad more border, some mountain range to the SE, added lakes to drain into swamp / fen etc to be able to enlarge
archipelago 1-31-2013.jpg
Looking nice, dude. That border is something I'd NEVER have the patience to attempt.
What's that area of polka dots by the mountains? A city?
Small update is still an updateLooking good so far
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