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Thread: The Shattered Continent

  1. #1
    Guild Adept Corilliant's Avatar
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    Wip The Shattered Continent

    The Shattered Continent - Project in Progress by Corilliant

    Description: Set in the northern hemisphere of this world, the great nation of Ryweth and her neighbours stand against the increasingly powerful Arean Confederacy, which now holds over half of the world's land. Already much of Trionne has fallen to the warring nation, and only South Ryweth's spectacular naval strength prevents the Great North from being overwhelmed by Arean's military.
    This is only a rough idea of what I want my eventual map of this long landmass to look like. Forgive the crappy colouring, it's for nation referencing. Likewise, the city names are not fixed, but the coasts and the political statuses are. I'll also end up digitising the entire map, but I'll need lots and lots of help, not only to learn from the tutorials but from you guys too. Or maybe I might just keep it black and white...(no pun intended).


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    Corilliant

  2. #2
    Professional Artist Naima's Avatar
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    Seems a well tought layout so far .

  3. #3
    Guild Adept Corilliant's Avatar
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    Update 1: This is a digitised version. i have extended the map slightly. No borders specified, just land and sea.
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    I'm working on a simple colour + borders and city labelled map at the moment for this.

  4. #4
    Guild Adept Corilliant's Avatar
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    Update 2: Just fiddling around with Photoshop Elements. I also stumbled across arched text; I thought you couldn't do that in elements... This is just me a'fiddling around with layers.
    Thanks to Jeremy Elford and his tutorial.
    Obviously this is not going to be what my final map looks like, I am just considering all options. What advice do you guys have on adding mountains to these kinds of maps? Draw on mountains in a separate layer before or after digitising, or using layers and masks to create mountains?

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  5. #5

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    I don't know the limitations of photoshop elements. GIMP is a free program and is incredibly powerful.

    Mountains take several layers. From the lay of your rivers it seems the bulk of your mountains (i.e. the high ground from whence all rivers flow) would be along the eastern shore. Kinda makes sense looking at your map. SO - use a lasso tool to select a nice area for the mountains.

    Ya know what - I just started typing up the steps and realized ... there's a tutorial for it:

    http://www.cartographersguild.com/tu...ains-gimp.html

  6. #6
    Guild Adept Corilliant's Avatar
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    Thanks!
    I've also been using the lasso tool to sort out my ocean colours (you know, shallow is light, deep is dark) as it's much easier to control than a brush in layer masking.

  7. #7
    Guild Adept Corilliant's Avatar
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    Update 3: Now I'm working on the sea. I used blurring and a continuous use of the lasso with the paint bucket to cut away different shades.
    Any suggestions?
    Click image for larger version. 

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    (I'm ignoring the land for just a moment).

    Also progress on the land using mountains and layers:
    Click image for larger version. 

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    And I've just realised it looks better without the coastline drawn in. Heh.
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    Last edited by Corilliant; 08-18-2014 at 06:00 AM.

  8. #8
    Guild Adept Corilliant's Avatar
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    Some progress.
    Updates 4 and 5:

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    I'm going to draw in mountains soon, but I'm not sure whether I should make the land a constant sandy colour with slightly purple mountain areas, or head for a more grassy theme...
    Hmm. Last update until the LC is finished.

  9. #9

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    Very nice. My suggestion is that you complete two maps for this. A geographical map similar to Google earth, with political information layered on top, and another that is neatly exactly like your colored Hand drawn one. The hand drawn one I think had a wonderful color palette that feels very familiar to the middle and high school social geography classes.

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