WIP - Freehand mountains

[Chick]

I would still get rid of those 4 lonely mountains in the upper left corner.

OK, you talked me into it. They didn't have any particular purpose, just filling space, and the forests can do that job just as well.

I am not sure that outlining the forests is good - it looks like if they were levitating with a cast shadow below them. But it is perhaps only me. Forests at the scale you are using look just like green smudges that blend at edges with the plain.

Most of that is the drop shadow, and the rest is the tree trunks, neither of which I really liked. On the other hand, eliminating them left too little contrast between the brown parchment background and the trees at the edges, so I had to seriously darken the forests to be able to see the edges clearly. Do you like this better?

[Ascension]

The linear mountains kinda need a linear forest - black lines. And I liked the trunks, gives character, but not too heavy on the shadow because the trunks will lend themselves to a shading effect. The map doesn't have to be accurate to within an inch, this is representational... just keep your styles consistent.

[Deadshade]

Personnally I like the second forest better.
At this scale you wouldn't see the trunks anyway.

As for the contrast, a wild forest doesn't have one - it blends gradually in the plain (e.g the trees disappear gradually and not brutally on spot).
But there is indeed a consistence question - because your style is more symbolical than realistic, you can afford symbolical forests (like tree brushes).

You could perhaps play with colors so that the forest slowly blends in the yellow of the background (like a circular gradient in Gimp). Once you get colors that you like, you can always add some more symbolical highlighting like small circles here and there. Unfortunately as my style is much more realistic than symbolical I won't be big help there.

[Chick]

Personally, I think I like these trees the way they are now. I did have tree trunks on them, but they were so small that you had to zoom way in to even see them, and all they really did was add darkness. For a closer view, the trunks would be fine.

I don't like the idea of trying to blend the edges of the forest smoothly into the background color. I think that would work ok for something that was trying to look very realistic (as darkshade says), but mapping is more about depicting locations, boundaries, edges, and terrain types (as ascension suggests), so the edges of the forests look ok to me now. I don't see the need for dark lines just because the mountains have them, as long as the edges of both are clean. The color is darker than I really wanted, but the more I look at it, the better I like it.

[Chick]

I started this map as a way to practice a new style, still just trying to learn how to do a lot of variations of fantasy world maps. The map was originally inspired by Max's Western Lands map.

It turned into a major lesson on mountain-making, shape, placement, and coloring, and a bit on forest-making, and I want to acknowledge all the people who contributed their ideas and critiques.

To that end, some of the place names in the map reflect the people who helped me with this. A minor apology to those where I modified the name slightly to make more sense on the map itself, but I think you'll recognize yourself when you see it.

This was a lot of fun and a great learning experience, one that I cannot imagine getting anywhere other than the Guild. A great community of people!

Cheers,
Cornelia

[xpian]

Very cute, thank you. And good work. Swift progress.

[Deadshade]

Hehe a very good map and a nice initiative
What is the font you used ?

[Chick]

What is the font you used ?

http://www.dafont.com/freebooter-script.font

[Chick]

Bumping this to make it easier to find as referenced in another thread

[hermes418]

yeah a very nice sketch