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    Guild Member Sirith's Avatar
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    Post Handdrawn satellite map inspired by Norway

    I love satellite maps. The shades of the mountains, crazy colours of the deserts, flowing lines of some geographical features, unexpected shapes, it's just awesome. I like it so much, I want my map of the world I'm working on to be like that.
    Preferably like Norway. Oh, how I love looking at those fjords, gletsjers and valleys in
    Google Maps. Scotland and some other northerly parts of the world have these beautiful features too. I want to go there and see them myself.

    Ahem.

    I want to make maps that look like real world satellite maps. I've tried Ascensions tutorial, and it gave good results, but it's not really my cup of tea... It's too much fussing with Photoshop stuff, while I prefer drawing and painting in Painter. So, I set out to somewhat duplicate Norway. Try to get the same feel, same look, but in Painter.

    Here's what I did, all the while referencing Google Maps' Norway:

    1) Made a very dark blue background, with a little bit of colour variation (it's barely noticeable, but still breaks up a flat colour nicely). Then in relatively bright colours freehanded some shapes for the border of water/land, lower/higher parts, en higher/snowy parts.

    2) Filled it up with colours used. This took very long since I had everything on the same layer (non-destructive mapping, never heard of it! ) and filled up most of it freehand. With a size 2 pencil.

    3) After applying some shades, I figured the brown didn't work, so changed it to green.

    4) Messed around with some Painter brushes I never used before (Oily coloured pencil), creating the snowy areas.

    Now, this looks nice, especially on very small scale (like the thumbnails of the attachments). But I'm stuck on the detailing, it's rather hard doing that convincingly, for me. Somehow every detailing I try in Painter ends up looking bad (it doesn't read well, wrong colours, etc). Perhaps I could throw it into Photoshop, see what I can do there, but for now I'm searching for some way I can achieve the shaded relief-satellite type thing in Painter.

    For the record, this is very much a 'how-the-heck-do-I-do-this' type map, finding a way to eventually pull it off on a full continental map. Also, it needs some textures, but I want to see how far I can get without 'em.

    Any comments? Ideas (anything, if you know something in Photoshop that has nothing to do with freehanded painting it, that would be cool as well)? Is my fourth attachment looking any good in full size? Is it too messy or do you have no idea what all those white spots are? Are my colour choices way too bright for your tastes (I'll be honest, I like bright, saturated colours)?


    edit: Noooooww, I typo'd the title . Can a mod please make an end to the jarring lack of an 'a' in satellite?
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Click image for larger version. 

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    Last edited by Sirith; 06-01-2009 at 11:51 AM.

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