WIP: Aardia and the Kyzian Empire

[SumnerH]

And 5) Finnish is a weird outlier that's not related to Swedish/Danish/Norwegian/Icelandic, though some vocabulary is borrowed.

[SumnerH]

Interesting fact 3: This is also true of the Chinese languages but they look the same when written down. Since it is one country they are considered dialects.
Interesting fact 4: The Scandinavian languages are more or less mutually intelligible but since they exist in different countries they are seen as different languages.

Hence the somewhat comedic and somewhat true definition: a language is a dialect with an army.

[Jalyha]

Yep


Was saying, without the rigid structures those militaries and caste systems imposed, you'd be more like to see the language of the common people


I used that terminology because it followed earlier parts of the discussion.


And yeah... I think the "Romance" vs "Roman" thing is why people say (of either French, Italian, or sometimes both) "It's the language of LOVE".

Lol.


& @ Sumner : Yes and no on the nordic/english thing... I was referring to the splits, not the direction, so yes, it boils down to what you said, but I meant the *degrees* of seperation between them, rather than the path they took Same result, different methodology, lol

[SumnerH]

Shifting gears, I'm playing with some hand-drawn terrain to see if I want to go that way. There are only about 5 unique mountains and 5 hills here, if I did go with this I'd draw them all or at least have many more variants. Also the lines under the mountains should be split into another layer and be more consistent. But it's enough to get a first impression (and I just got a Wacom tablet so it's an excuse to play with that):



EDIT: I realized I moved the continent layer accidentally and have floating cities in the ocean. Oops! Ignore that, the only thing I'm interested in are thoughts on whether those style mountains/hills are worth pursuing.

In particular I'm going to want some kind of monochrome option for paper printing, and this is one of the better ones. I'll also be pursuing a realistic/satellite-style view as well.

Tutorial I found handy: http://www.cartographersguild.com/tu...e-ps-gimp.html

[SumnerH]

So, extending that idea to the full region for a monochrome map.


I'm not happy with the hills, I think the shading to the right side may be too heavy. Considering. After that: forests.

[SumnerH]

Still working on the hand-drawn map, but also working on an artistic regional map per RobA's tutorial here:
http://www.cartographersguild.com/tu...l-rpg-map.html

First cut:


The labels were just copied and pasted out of inkscape and need the transparent groupings removed, the rivers need to be rendered at higher res and then reduced, lots of other tweaks and cleanups, but it's a first learning experience at bump-mapping and pixel operations and some parts of it look okay.

[SumnerH]

And some forests per:
http://www.cartographersguild.com/tu...-mini-tut.html

Also toned down the ocean color and darkened the rivers/lakes.

And I brushed in some hill variance in some of the regions that should have it. Too subtle? Any tips on hills?

[Lingon]

I like the latest version! The hills are really nice. I think the forests are too dark though, either lightening them or dropping their opacity (or both) would make them fit in with the rest of the landscape better. Also, a tiny nitpick, because I'm like that: the coast in the south tangents the edge of the paper, making it look like the map was cropped and something is missing. I'd suggest giving it some water below it, or cropping the coast away completely, for a more harmonious picture.

[SumnerH]

Thanks for the feedback.

You're right, the forests do look way too dark for the rest of the palette. I think this is maybe a bit too light, what do you think? (Also added some sea floor texture):



The framing issue is a good one, I'll crop it down but I'm going to wait until it's closer to finished. I may also crop out the western continent entirely, haven't decided yet.

[Lingon]

I don't think it is too light, but I do think it is too vibrant. The rest of the land is nicely muted. Lowering the opacity of the forests would probably blend them in more, but you can also play around with the saturation and color balance of the forest layer