Cadurca (temporary name) WIP

[Greg]

It looks really great Thomrey, your colours work beautifully together and I always love seeing different styles of water! And feel free to play around more with it; there's always one of us here to give some feedback!

In regards to the water transparency, as Tonnichiwa said, it definitely looks a little strange over the trees. Unfortunately, if you just make it less transparent I don't think it will help and still look like the red weed from War of the Worlds! Changing its colour may help but I still think it would look strange. Wait to see if anyone else has any suggestions, but to me there are two options:
1) Do as Tonnichiwa said and put gaps in the treelines, or
2) Erase the river part that goes over the forests, so that you see their source on one side and then them coming out on the other, as the trees would obscure it (depending on the aesthetic you want). To me this second option seems the easier to try, but then again you may not want to make parts of your rivers unknown.

Anywho, these are just suggestions and feel free to ignore them if you want!

I look forwards to your next update because it really is looking nice and good luck with whatever you choose to do!

[ThomasR]

@ Tonnichiwa

I know Dain did something like this on his Tanaephis map (for the french RPG Bloodlust Metal). I wanted to try something similar one day but not this soon.

My problem is that I don't want the river system and the lake to be darker than the sea (obviously) and I don't know how to do it.

@GLS

Thank you for the compliment and for taking some time to give me solutions.
Maybe I'll redraw the borders of the forests so that they follow the rivers. I'll just have to move lightly some rivers and be done with it. It'll be solution 1.
For solution 2, I don't want to hide the rivers but Dain's solution might work (work is the word if you catch my drift ... BTW, the french word for work is "travail" which comes from the latin "tripalium" which is a torture device with three pikes, for impaling purposes- trivia off).

Does anyone else has ideas about this ?

[Chashio]

That's a really nice style thomrey.
This might help...

You can use an adjustment layer to modify the freshwater layer however you want - sounds like you want to lighten it after you make it opaque?
Open the Adjustments panel (menu > Window > Adjustments) and add a Hue/Saturation or Brightness/Contrast or Levels adjustment and play with the sliders til you get what you want.
Note: It will create an adjustment layer above the current layer (freshwater) but will affect every layer below it unless you create a clipping mask (right-click the adjustment layer title in the layers panel and select that option).

[ThomasR]

First of all, Thanks a lot Chashio. I tried your way and it didn't work for me but I finally understood how to use that kind of layer so a huge thanks about that.

After trying some stuff, I finally decided to use three layers for the river :

Top is a Color Layer with low opacity. I sprayed my color at full opacity then cropped with a mask based on my river system.
Middle, the same as top but set at Normal with average opacity.
And Bottom is a Normal layer where I drew my river system in black. On this layer, I used my forests as mask so the river color is muted under the trees.

I tried redrawing the forests border and covering the rivers under the forests but it didn't look good. I guess it's ok as it is but please, tell me what you think of it.

I drew the hills, colored them, shaded them and lit them. I also added some grey to the mountains and a faint green/orange (color jittered grunge brush at low opacity) to the plains. I might duplicate the sea layer to get a strongest red but I'm not sure yet.

Here's the result :



I wonder if I should ad a light glow around the compass ...

Next step will be the damned plateau and I also have to add some details to the shadows on the mountains an perhaps on the forests. Details for the terrains is really needed too.

So, what do you think ?

[Abu Lafia]

I like the shape of your landmass a lot thomrey, and i think you did an awesome job spreading your mountain ranges, rivers & forests in a very appealing and balanced way. Also thumbs up for the red water!
A couple of things that came to my mind:
- the shading on the hills looks good, but has too much contrast compared to the mountains what makes them "pop out" a bit too much in my view.
- the parts of the coast that are brighter than the rest of the landmass are fantastic. It gives the whole coastline a nicely rugged and "natural" look. I only think you could tone it a little bit down.
- I'm not to fond of the river/forest solution. You wrote you tried to redraw "the forests border and covering the rivers under the forests". Did you want to go for the above mentioned solution Dain used on his Tanaephis map? Or have you just tried to redraw the forests border along the riverbanks? I imagine the latter might work very well here.
- Would love to see a slight outer glow around the compass (awesome work btw! ) to make it stand out a bit more.
Not sure if these ideas are helpful, or make any sense at all. It is a very fine map already. Keep up the great work!
Cheers,
AL

[ThomasR]

Thanks Abu for this feedback.

I toned down both light and shading on the hills and did the same on the coastline, it looks less agressive this way, you were right

Concerning the forest, I tried redrawing borders along the riverbank but wasn't pleased by the fragmented aspect of the forests. As they are drawn, they seem to crawl on land and mountains and I'd like to keep that feel. I guess I'll be forced to do it like Dain did but :
1- it's gonna be a lot of work (it was supposed to be a practice map so I guess the goal will be fulfilled)
2- I wonder if my canopy is not too crowded for that kind of trick to work. In Dain's Map, the canopy was not very detailed and the contrast of the details along the rivers worked great. Here, not so much I guess.

And here comes the highlighted compass, tell me if it's good as it is or if it needs something more.



Thank you again !

Thomas

[Abu Lafia]

Yeah, i understand that you weren't pleased by the fragmentation of the forests that comes with this solution. I took another look at the Tanaephis map. You're right, Dain's forests are overall less crowded with details. I just thought, you could try it the opposite way: what about depicting the river under the canopy not by more density of details, but by less details? The main effect comes from the shading/lightning anyway i guess, so you could just try to erase the linework "above" the rivers and just add a bit more around the banks? That way it wouldn't be that much work and you'd get a similar but different effect.
Edit: I hope it's ok with you, but i couldn't resist giving it a short try in gimp to make more clear what i mean by this:

The tweaking of the hills and the coast looks more smooth now indeed. For the compass, i'd even lower the opacity of the glow. The effect is good, but it somewhat obscures your excellent linework on it.

[Chashio]

First of all, Thanks a lot Chashio. I tried your way and it didn't work for me but I finally understood how to use that kind of layer so a huge thanks about that.

I've always found the adjustment layers really useful - and clipping masks.

[ThomasR]

Abu, thanks again, what you did looks really great ! And it's of course perfectly fine for you to tweak my map. Had I seen it earlier, it would have saved me lots of time and wrist pain ...

Here's what I did.



I don't know which way I'll go. Dain's or Abu's. Abu's seems more elegant and withstands a close examination, a feat my version of Dain's work doesn't accomplish.

it's been a long way at drawing, I mean two long days, it's time for me to take a break.

Feel free to tell me what you think, which option you find the most elegant and of course to criticize chat I did here.

@Abu : many, many thanks, your option is gorgeous. I also reduced the glow on the compass.

[ThomasR]

I'll keep Cadurca more simple than Kanoba's March ... I hope.

...
HAHAHAHAHAHA !!