Kingdom of Bataar - Local Map

[jshoer]

I really like those trees and forests. Subtle, distinct, and effective.

[ChickPea]

Your mountains are amazing, Llannagh, and I love what you've done with the forests. The colouring is great and looks very natural.

[ascanius]

I agree your forests are vary well done same with the mountains. The two things that I don't like is the white in the layer beneath, it washes out the color, especially with the grey mountains. Try changing the white to a light green, brown, orange, and in very rare spots red. Same thing with the mountains, the grey gives it a washed out feel, especially near so many shades of green. I don't know if that makes sense so...... You have rich greens and when you get to the greys of the mountains and the white spots throught the rest of the landscape it pulls away from the colors.

[Llannagh]

Hi guys, thanks for the rep and feedback.

Ascanius, I enrichened the colors in the background and added a brown shading at the mountain' bases. I think it works quite well. I left a few spaces a little lighter, since it gives a sense of relief.



I'll go on now and see if I can figure out a nice way to depict settlements and such.

Cheers, Llannagh

[Llannagh]

After being stuck for a while because I didn't know how to go about the border and what to do with the blank spaces around the mountains, I just filled them in with indistinct landscapey green and will put the map onto a bigger canvas later, to add a border and some nice explanatory stuff.

Before that I'm working on icons for settlements and roads and I guess labeling.

For now I got these two versions, one with a bevel on both roads and icons and without:



The one without bevel is too hard to read, while the other clashes too much with the style, I think. It might be a start though, so I appreciate any input!

[ChickPea]

Definitely the one without the bevel! You're absolutely right that the bevel clashes with your lovely hand-drawn style.

I don't think it's hard to see the roads or the red icons, though the grey ones get lost a little against the background. Could you try adding a small black stroke around the grey icon, or maybe a glow, to make them stand out? Not sure how that'll work, since the icons are pretty small. Could you try a different colour instead of grey?

[Llannagh]

Duh! I originally meant to add an outer glow! Thanks for reminding me!

I think this is going in the right direction:

[ChickPea]

Yes, much better!

[Humabout]

I really like the forest and pallet here. I think what I'm finding a little jarring in all the maps is that the icons and dotted lines feel like they were added in a computer while the rest feels like it was painted with a brush. Is there a way to roughen up the icons a tad, maybe with a touch of grunge or some linear striations (like a slight motion blur) to give the effect of brush or pencil strokes? That might not be the right approach - I'm pretty novice with such things - but I hope you get my meaning.

[Llannagh]

Thanks for the input Humabout. Good point with the blurring, I used a pen-tool instead of a brush tool, which makes very harsh edges. So I changed that.

This is my latest progress:



This is roughly what I'm going for when the map itself is finished. I'm going to add some nice borders (which will be a first for me) and some descriptions and a legend. The legend right now is just for you guys so you have an idea what's what.

Known issues:

- icons and small roads in darker areas are very hard to make out
- inner borders may seem confusing/too much
- it might not make much sense to put major villages in heavily forested areas...

I added a VERY slight drop shadow to the icons and an outer glow to make them more distinct. At the moment I think it works alright, though I have been staring at it for some hours now and may have become blind. So, if you don't like it, don't fret, it's not necessarily final.

Man, it feels good to be working on this again!