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Great start! I love what you have so far : colors, coasts, mountains, everything is very harmonious. My only nitpick would be about the parchment border which is a bit blurry.
Briste Isles
Instead of working on my challenge map, as I was supposed to be doing, I ended up playing around with something else. I think this was the map I really wanted to be working on!
I can stop looking at antique maps, because they're so full of charm and colour, and that's sorta the influence behind this one. (I don't have the art skills of Ye Olde Timey mapmakers, but then they didn't have Gimp and an undo button!)
I haven't got too far into it yet, but this is my background and basic land shapes. I've only just started on the rivers, so there's still a bunch of those to be added. I might play about with rhumb lines, but I have no real clue what I'm doing there, so we'll see how that works out.
Latest WIP below.
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams"
Great start! I love what you have so far : colors, coasts, mountains, everything is very harmonious. My only nitpick would be about the parchment border which is a bit blurry.
Nice start... all elements comming together very well.
How did you make the dotty pattern in the ocean?
Really interesting start. I will follow your work with pleasure. I just have a note on the river vertically on the island on the left. His sources do not fit in harmoniously with your mountains. Good work.
Great start,
The dotted sea is great and the hatched coast is very well accomplished. I also like the choice of colors so far and the general layout that you have lined up. All that is very promising, but I don't think the mountains are at the same par yet. You're using a stroke that seems to be far thicker and the overall scale of this is hard to read when you put so many peaks together in the middle of every island.
By the way, scale concerning, are these Britain-sized islands or more of a small-archipelago-in-the-ocean?
(By the way no.2, and off-topic... where is Sunny-Scotland? I know Scotland, I've been to Scotland, but I have never heard of Sunny Scotland)
Yeah, I see what you mean. Because the edge was uneven it looked quite pixellated, so I blurred it a bit but I think I went too far. The black shadow underneath doesn't help eihter. I'll take another look at it.Originally Posted by Ilanthar
I did it the hard way by randomly tapping over the canvas then using the offset filter to create a seamless pattern. It should have been mindlessly boring, but it actually felt mildly theraputic.
I guess you mean the left hand tributary of the bottom river? Hmmm, it does just kinda start from nowhere! I can probably have it come out from behind the mountain.
I'm using a 2px hard brush in Gimp. If I go down to 1px it starts to look horribly pixellated. I can't recall right now, but I possibly have some other setting that's thickening it. I know the smoothing is set quite high. Not sure offhand if that makes a difference.
Do you think I'd be better with fewer mountains, perhaps spread out more widely? Or fewer lines within the mountains I have?
Archipelago size. I envisioned the entire map area to be around 80 miles wide x 50 high (very roughly 130x80km)By the way, scale concerning, are these Britain-sized islands or more of a small-archipelago-in-the-ocean?
Hahaha! Sunny Scotland is where my hopes, dreams and unabashed optimism live!(By the way no.2, and off-topic... where is Sunny-Scotland? I know Scotland, I've been to Scotland, but I have never heard of Sunny Scotland )
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams"
I'm liking this so far! I like the thickness/stroke of the mountains, and I'd keep that as-is. What about beefing up the coastline a little bit? That's what I ended up doing on my current map and it seems to help a bit.
Yeah, I think that would be worth trying. There is quite a difference between the mountain & coastline thickness, and I can see how it might be a little jarring. The coastline is certainly the easier to fix, so I'll give it a go.
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams"
Back to work on this map after stopping for the latest lite challenge.
I've tweaked the parchment edge slightly and hope it looks less blurry than before. I feel that I need to put a little blur on it or it looks really pixellated when you zoom in because of the uneven edge.
I've thickened the stroke around the coastline, as suggested by Diamond, and I think it looks a lot better, so thanks for that idea.
I finished the rivers and I've added some forest areas and tried to copy the style you see on Blaeu maps. Can't decide if I should tone down the green forest background a little, so it's more of a 'barely there' level of opacity. Not sure if it's a little dominant right now.
Next is labelling.
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams"
My initial impression is, yeah, tone down the green. But you may end up needing it at that level to balance everything else you put it. Only time will tell. Any plans to put color behind the mountains?
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