November/December 2015 Challenge: A Lack of Cooperation

[Diamond]

Bogie's given me a great challenge:

For your commission Sir Diamond, I would like you to create a regional map showing 2 small rival kingdoms. They should be divided by a natural barrier such as a mountain range, a canyon, a river, or a "no mans land". The barrier should not be impenetrable. A mountain range would have a couple passes, a canyon might have a couple bridges etc. Each kingdom should have a couple of major resources the other lacks. One could have a safe natural harbor and mines for iron, copper and silver, but be mostly a harsh land where little grows. The other could be the opposite with lush fields and forests but be isolated with no trade routes and no mineral resources. The setting could have led to great cooperation to each others benefit, but instead lead to rivalries and jealousy, plotting and conquest.

There you go, can't wait to see what you come up with.

I've decided to go with a pseudo-WWI theme, with the barrier being a No Man's Land of trenches and poison gas centered on a great (one might even say Grand) canyon that separates the two countries.

[soggymuse]

This sounds great, Diamond, I can't wait to see what you come up with.

[Bogie]

Great idea D.

[Diamond]

Well dang, I guess I better finally post something. I'm not entirely happy with this, but I'm really pressed for time, so I'm going to let it ride and see what happens. General topography done, seas/lake blocked in. The clean, flat area in the right-hand area of the map is going to be where the No Man's Land is; along the left side will be a semi-transparent key box to balance all the action on the right. The topography was done using USGS topo data, with some photoshop filters applied to soften it up a bit.

### Latest WIP ###

[J.Edward]

Not sure why you're not happy with it... It looks great to me.
It looks like it's going to be a good one. Font choice could make it go one way or another.
What time period was it to be?

Pressed for time.. I'm still waiting for Larb to get back to me.
I don't even know what my commission is yet.

[Diamond]

World War One-ish is probably what I'm shooting for. Not sure how I'll do fonts yet - my initial idea was a Germanic thing like Augusta (which I really love), but maybe something more modern would be better. Guess I'll just have to play around.

[vorropohaiah]

how'd you do that topography?

[Bogie]

The topography looks great!

[Diamond]

how'd you do that topography?

I took (in this case) three different USGS topo maps and did some editing to merge them together. I erased some bits there, moved some others around here, until I got what I wanted. Then I smoothed out rough edges/blended things a bit, and applied some filters (posterize and a couple others) to soften things up - the raw USGS data is too crisp and clean. Then just a simple sepia color overlay. If I was feeling REALLY ambitious, I'd paint in different colors. I may still, but don't hold your breath.

[Chick]

I've looked at topo maps a few times, but I didn't see any easy way to get rid of the colored topo lines. Did you do that, or did you find some that didn't have the lines and labels?