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Thread: Help Remaking a Regional "Painted" Map

  1. #11
    Community Leader jfrazierjr's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Vernon View Post
    I've been looking at graphics tablets, but I'm going to wait on getting one since it isn't something I think I need to finish. I went ahead and colored in the open areas with a water color brush; I wanted to save this for the end but I guess it doesn't really matter if I do it now.

    I also gave the rivers a stroke and I like the way that ended up looking. I've gotten rid of the mountains and will fill them in next chance I have to work on the map...
    If you have any plans (and I highly suggest it!) getting a tablet, I would say go for it. You will greatly benefit from it in several areas, notably tapered rivers and mountain work. If price is somewhat a factor, you can always check out ebay or (my recommendation) craigslist, especially if you live in a decent sized city.

    Also, if you don't want to go the tablet route, RobA, has created a tutorial here for how to use Inkscape to create the tapered rivers, so you might want to look that up. I assume Illustrator has something similar also if you use the Adobe products.
    Last edited by RobA; 08-10-2008 at 11:01 PM. Reason: fixed quote
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  2. #12
    Community Leader jfrazierjr's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Midgardsormr View Post
    A couple of things. For the scale you're depicting, you had too far too many very tiny mountains. Consider making each mountain symbol about four to six times the size of each tree "tuft." Not only will that make your scaling look nicer, it will also mean fewer mountains to have to draw/place.

    For the foothills, many maps of this sort use a smaller, round-topped symbol to indicate hills. Consider the attached image, which is a section of a map drawn with Campaign Cartographer 3 (full map here).

    For towns and cities, you can certainly go with a simple dot, square or symbol; that's what I prefer. There are plenty of maps with little city icons, too, though, which look really good. I don't recall if anyone shared any of those or not. If not, that would be a good thing to add to our resources area here.

    What Mid said.


    Also, I just noticed your river/sea meeting point. You might want to consider making a tapper of the think dark outline for a few(20?) pixels of each side to meet the river to make it look a bit more natural. You could erase this manually if needed with a small brush to make this blend in....
    My Finished Maps
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    How to create ISO Mountains in GIMP/PS using the Smudge tool
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  3. #13
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    I tried my hand at those hand-drawn mountains and I think I did an okay job. This is a cut of the Gray Mountains, I haven't done the Blood Mountains, yet. I like the way the hills look in that image posted by Midgardsormr, I think I'll use them. I just hope they still look good over a larger area.

    I also cleared the border where the river met the sea, but I don't have an image ready of it. I didn't know what was meant by tappering it, though.
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  4. #14
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    Finished (I think)
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  5. #15

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    It looks terrific! The new mountains are a huge improvement.

    You mentioned that you didn't know what was meant by tapering the rivers. That means that the river gets narrower as it nears its source, usually ending in a sharp point. With a tablet, it's a simple matter to set the line width to pen pressure. Without a tablet it's a bit harder, but it can still be done. Check out your brush dynamics settings and experiment a bit.

    I'm sorry I can't give more specific advice, but I'm a relative newbie to PS and I don't have it available to me here at work.

    Didn't Arcana promise to provide a small tutorial on how to accomplish tapered rivers in Photoshop without a tablet? I'd still like to see that one.
    Bryan Ray, visual effects artist
    http://www.bryanray.name

  6. #16
    Administrator Facebook Connected Robbie's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Midgardsormr View Post
    Didn't Arcana promise to provide a small tutorial on how to accomplish tapered rivers in Photoshop without a tablet? I'd still like to see that one.
    Sure did...sorry I got sidetracked though...Here's the tutorial!

    http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=2711
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