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Hi Vorropohaiah, I'm such a huge fan of you're work, it's neat to see some of the process, I never knew you had a tutorial so this was a nice surprise to come across. I'll have to go check it out. In my opinion, everything you create is gold.
[WIP] Inner Sea map
I haven’t posted a WIP on here for some time. I don’t tend to show most of my commissions, and my personal maps haven’t had much that I can share before they’re done. This is something a bit more abitious, though.
Some of you might be familiar with my Cartographer’s Choice map, the Inner Sea. That map’s over 4 years old now and personally I think it’s really showing it’s age. I was only then starting to learn how to use Photoshop and was still experimenting with style. I’ve since moved on to a more modern style (both in terms of worldbuilding as well as the maps themselves), as can be seen from my Atlas Elyden thread. I’m enjoying the work that goes into those atlas maps, though the topography and stitching that needs to be done to incorporate the maps into a larger whole is quite time-consuming.
My efforts so far have seen me map various parts of the Inner Sea region I had explored originally 4 years ago. So I’m going to take what I’ve done on these maps (the first was created in January this year) and apply that to a new map of the Inner Sea, depicting a slightly smaller area than that first version (I’ll be omitting the area of the Dark Sea in the bottom right to really concentrate on the Inner Sea itself.
I’m currently working on the topography, which is the most time-consuming part of the project. I’m probably half done by now, and am busy working on a region of dense mountains which is taking a long time to get done. Other than that i still need to tinker with the ‘finished’ areas to get them looking a bit more natural. Once that’s done I’ll be able to concentrate on rivers before getting things like borders and labels done.
I’ll be working at A1 size at 400 dpi on this one, with an eye to getting it printed as a poster. I’ll later resize it to A3 and relabel (removing less important labels as necessary to accommodate the smaller size) for my Atlas Elyden project. Work may be slow, because of this:
I intend on keeping the same colours as the atlas maps, though I might weather the map a bit, to make it look used.
This is what I have ready so far, in terms of Topography. Keep in mind I;ve had to resize the image from 400 dpi all the way down to 80 dpi, due to the size limits on uploads. Many regions are still rough (particularly the south and south western areas of the map), with just the first layer of topography finished (like in the south east):
To anyone wondering, the topography is done 100% by hand and none of it is generated. Each level of topography is a separate layer in Photoshop, filled with the respective colour and given a hide all mask that’s painted white and given a 1px dark brown stroke.
More details on how the map is generated can be found on a tutorial I posted, here
Last edited by vorropohaiah; 09-12-2016 at 01:58 PM.
Hi Vorropohaiah, I'm such a huge fan of you're work, it's neat to see some of the process, I never knew you had a tutorial so this was a nice surprise to come across. I'll have to go check it out. In my opinion, everything you create is gold.
Wow, I cannot fault you for ambition, Vorro. Looking forward to seeing this develop.
Oh, and for what it's worth, I love the original Inner Sea map and think it still holds its own.
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams"
It's not exactly a tutorial. more of a style guide - there's no step-by-step though there's lots of in depth details behind the process that goes into making the mapsOriginally Posted by kacey
I guess we're all our own worst critic, though I really see some of the layer styles and patterns (And fonts...) used and cringe!Wow, I cannot fault you for ambition, Vorro. Looking forward to seeing this develop.
Oh, and for what it's worth, I love the original Inner Sea map and think it still holds its own.
Wow, your maps are in Gb?? What is sure is that my computer would not handle such big files!
I second ChickPea, your first map was epic (and in my inspiration folder), this new one already looks great.
Well I wouldn't say my pc enjoys working on files this size. More than once I've had to chop up a single map into multiples just so I can work on it with a semblance of sanity and not having to wait 10 - 20 minutes to apply a layer style or filterWow, your maps are in Gb?? What is sure is that my computer would not handle such big files
Well, I begin to have problems with a file bigger than 500 Mb... Hence my surprise with Gb
working with image data sets in the GB and tens of gig size can be a bit tricky at times
cropping a area and working on that then adding it back in is the way to go
however today's computers handle them better than 15 years ago
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even just cropping it can take minutes to do. I just disable all layer styles and work with the bare minimum layers showing whenever possible.
That is an incredible level of detail! Thank you for posting the link to your guide. I am looking forward to reading through it.
You probably already know this, but you might be able to help Photoshop use less memory if you adjust the level of History states you have
