Shandar: Land of the Exalted

[Diamond]

I feel like it's been forever since I posted a WIP thread around here, so time to change that. This is going to be a region with Asian themes, mainly Indian and central-Asian khanate influenced. It'll be done in a semi-realistic style (emphasis on the semi-), with lots of traditional European-style map elements - maybe this map was drawn by a traveler to the region, I dunno.

Anyway, here's the first step:

[arsheesh]

Ooh, nice. Look forward to seeing your workflow on this.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[kimni]

It sounds like a cool idea, and the coastline looks great!
May I ask how you did the lines in the ocean (not sure what they're called)?

[Diamond]

It sounds like a cool idea, and the coastline looks great!
May I ask how you did the lines in the ocean (not sure what they're called)?

That set of rhumb lines was created by Guild member Schwarzkreuz and generously donated for use a few years back.

It's fairly easy (though time consuming) to create your own: if you're using photoshop, create a document with guides where you want your line intersection points to be, then draw a vertical line right through the middle of the page. (Hint: it's good to create this on a BIG document, since there will be a lot of line rotating and cutting, and you need room to operate.) Duplicate that line on a new layer and rotate it 90 degrees. Merge those layers, duplicate it, and rotate the duplicate layer 45 degrees. Merge all the line layers. Now you've got your cardinal points. On a new layer, create a dashed line and follow the previous steps to get the desired effect. Merge again. Now you can duplicate this in a pattern wherever you want on your document - this is where it pays to have those guides already dragged out, so you know exactly where the rumb lines will go. After you've checked for inconsistencies in placement, you're done.

[Sapiento]

Nice start, D!

[Ilanthar]

Cool! I'm looking forward the next steps.

[kimni]

Thanks!
I use GIMP, but it sounds like it should work just as well as with Photoshop. I'll try that for one of my next maps...

[Diamond]

Here's some mountains and color:

[MartinMånsson]

Here's some mountains and color:

How do you go about making those mountains? That's exactly what i've been looking for, for a while.

[Eilathen]

Always good to see a Diamond WIP Thread. Looking forward to it.
And for no reason, i am now wondering how the map would look if you exchanged land and water parts ^^

Also, i hope you'll not only update the map but also the worldbuilding for it. It's always interesting to see the worldbuilding others come up with (at least to me ).