June / July '15 Lite Challenge: Donall's Bane

[Wolram]

Wow I love the text you've added, awesome backstory

I do think there are some perspective issues (I feel your pain!) Because the centre of the map feels like it's more from above, whereas the foreground and background seem like they are from a lower down perspective. I think the river is doing it?

Still looking good anyway!

[ChickPea]

Glad you like the story! I really enjoy writing a short backstory for a map.

Thanks for your insights on the perspective. I think you've nailed the problem. Sometimes I get too immersed in the work that it's hard to step back and view it objectively. I'm going to tweak the river and have it come in from the left, rather than from the mountains, so *hopefully* that'll help. I had wanted to include some other abandoned buildings originally, but there wasn't really space, but moving the river should help. Sigh .... I thought I was done with this!

[Bogie]

I like the cartouche, it's a very cool design. As for perspective, I would say the ocean looks to close to the crevasse and the ruins are to large relative to the crevasse.

[ChickPea]

Thanks Bogie, you're right in what you say. I've practically no experience with perspective and no art training whatsoever, so it's hard for me to point to issues sometimes and I get carried away with "Hey wouldn't it be cool if I did that ....!" Also, glad you like the cartouche!

I've tried to tweak things a little. I've changed the river, resized some of the buildings, added a couple more ruins and did a lot of erasing! I think the perspective still isn't perfect but hopefully it's a little better than it was. Hopefully this time, barring any minor issues I spot, I'm done!

### Latest WIP ###


I was goofing around with this and might try a nightime version after the challenge is over. I only spent 10 minutes on it, but it looked quite good against a dark background. The rift was glowing and it looked downright sinister!

[Meshon]

Twice-Oathbreaker! Man, he totally deserved whatever mysterious fate he got.

If you can bear to go back to it, I think that a little depth along the entirety of your river would look good. Sort of like this but, you know, better, like you would do it:


I think that the demonic rift as the centrepiece is spot on.

cheers,
Meshon

[Bogie]

I have 0 art training as well, but I think this does look better.

[ChickPea]

Thanks guys. I'll take another look at the river tonight and see what I can do with it.

[ChickPea]

So I tried to redo the river borders and add some depth along the edges, but it didn't look right. I felt like the perspective was getting thrown out again with the way I'd done it and I don't have any more time to spend on it figuring out what I was doing wrong. So I'll need to pass on that.

I have redrawn the river borders and hope that my shaky pen strokes look a little bit more natural against the other elements in the pic, than Inkscape's beautifully smooth curves did (probably not, but oh well). I've made another couple of very minor tweaks and I'm calling this one done.

### Latest WIP ###