The World of Marqash

[3l3phant]

First map I've done. Someone asked the steps I took to make it so including them here (I think I read in the sticky that's OK. If not, I apologize. Please let me know and I'll remove them.)

First was a sketch on paper of where I wanted the landmasses to be with a very rough outline of each of them. I scanned that into Photoshop and used a Wacom Intuos 3 tablet to trace the lines.

For the shorelines I selected the landmasses and then expanded by some number of pixels (6?) and did a stroke and then did that again, tweaking the Opacity.

The outer border was using the Polygon tool to make a triangle, replicate the layer and flip it 180 degrees vertically, playing them along each border with the filled-in circular marquee periodically interspersed. The font is a free Elvish one I found online and I used the type on a path to move it around the border (http://www.photoshopessentials.com/b...ype-on-a-path/).

The borders around the legend on the right are based off of a couple of tattoos of mine. The "signatures" of each of the members of the Cartographer's Guild are done in a different font so that they look like they were signed by different people. The towers are from a Deviant Art brush while the symbols above them are the defaults in the Custom Shape Tool.

The compass is just different shaped polygons tweaked in different ways (thicker bottom bars in the triangles that make up each of the points let me add two white dots in each and the tiny black dot in the center. The font is the same as around the border, again with the text-on-path.

Other than the crown in the center of the Capitol, which I found online in a free clipart site, the others are the same as on the compass - taking different shaped polygons and combining them in different ways. For example, the Ruins is supposed to look like an Indiana-Jones'ish temple.

The mountains were a pain. I have half of an entire sketchbook with different mountains that I've tried drawing. I used StarRavens map brushes (http://starraven.deviantart.com/art/...shes-198264358) to put the individual mountains on separate layers so that I could use Transform/Warp to get them the shape that I wanted, as well as changing the Opacity to reflect where they were in relation to each other and use the eraser to make sure that a mountain layer behind another mountain layer wasn't visible when the two overlapped.

Finally, the Marqash globe in the bottom left was done by selecting the landmass layer (that has all of the continents) and duplicating it and then using Photoshop's 3D New Shape From Layer/Sphere.

I think that covers it

[Jayharchitect]

Wow, great first map! I like the overall feel, a little sparse but a good hand drawn feel.

A few thoughts:
- Would be nice to see something to help distinguish water from land, either a hatch or a slight wash.
- Would love to see the signatures as actual signatures and not fonts... If you don't have good handwriting, find a friend who does!
- The shorelines have a pixelated quality, not sure what happened, might have been the brush you used in the stroke?
- Guild is spelled wrong under Margaret Mys

[3l3phant]

Many thanks!

In regard to the water, I've had a number of folks say that. I'm going to start looking through older maps to get an idea of some possibilities. In terms of the signatures, I was going for different ones for each, but yeah, hand-signed will definitely make a huge difference. Time to hit some friends up I'm guessing the shorelines are because of the select/expand/stroke/rinse/repeat of how I did them. Suggestions on alternative ways would be greatly appreciated. And whoops, thanks for catching that!

[Jayharchitect]

Try this: (I know you have been able to do this awhile in Photoshop, not sure if it is same in Essentials)

You will need Brush Preset toolbar, and Paths toolbar open (Window > Paths... Window > Brush Preset)

Before you start make sure you select the brush you want, and adjust the size to what you want (at the top, or quick keys [ or ] )

In PATHS window at the bottom hit the button that looks like a rectangle with a circle in it to create a new Path layer.

Select the path layer in the Path window

Use PEN tool to draw the shape you want, you can make multiple shapes in one layer.

Right click the path layer in the Path window, select "Stroke path"

Select Brush from drop down.

If that is confusing, you might google search a tutorial! If you aren't using photoshop... whoops!