Rept.... Really nice work
Wow, this map is now just as amazing as your last island and I thought that one was your best yet. Awesome stuff. Your ability makes me very envious.
Royal: I'm very sorry for your loss, your mother was a terribly attractive woman.
My Cartographer's Guild maps: Finished Maps
More maps viewable at my DeviantArt page: Ramah-Palmer DeviantArt
I love the texture you have on the forests. I want to see if I can get that down myself.
“When it’s over and you look in the mirror, did you do the best that you were capable of? If so, the score does not matter. But if you find that you did your best you were capable of, you will find it to your liking.” -John Wooden
* Rivengard * My Finished Maps * My Challenge Maps * My deviantArt
Beautiful map so far. The farmland is one of the highlights for me.
I don't care much for the mountains though, they look too much like thunder clouds when zoomed in I think.
Check out my City Designer 3 tutorials. See my fantasy (city) maps in this thread.
Gandwarf has fallen into shadow...
Wow, Ascension this is beautiful. I love the way you've given the cities such definition - it really allows the eye to instantly scale the map. Really magnificent job. How did you do the cities if you don't mind me asking and at what resolution are you drawing this?
It's 4000 x 4000 at 300 ppi. The cities are a 14 pixel scattered dry brush (comes with PS but I scaled it back from 449% scatter to 200%). Color overlay of yellow-brown, inner glow (set to center) of gray...this gives me gray middle parts to resemble stone buildings and tan buildings around the edge to resemble shacks, slight bevel, brown stroke (at 50% opacity), small drop shadow (at 50% opacity). Then on a new layer I use a pattern of something called "metal landscape" (it is white with black lines). Then I invert that to get white lines, delete the blacks, trim to fit, reduce opacity, a low opacity stroke and it now looks like I have some streets in my larger cities.
I've uploaded all of the layer styles used here as a zip. Make sure that you use white when painting/drawing or the results might vary because I use a lot of blending modes. At any rate, you can play around with them and see what you can come up with.
Last edited by Ascension; 06-14-2009 at 10:40 AM.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
I wanted to add that I also think the cities are a real highlight for the map. The map has got great texture and detail is virtually every area, but the cities to me are the most special. I will definitely try to remember that look.
I'm not as upset by your mountains as some of the others, but I do think they might benefit from deeper shadows. If you used some sort of emboss/bevel filter, you might try to re-run it with a greater height and see how it comes out?
PS. Your field brush reminds me of Sun Microsystems in a few spots! LOL
http://www.glenridgesolutions.com/images/sunlogo.jpg
Last edited by msa; 06-15-2009 at 06:18 PM.
Snagged a copy of that logo, gonna play with that and make it into a new field brush
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
After a week of looking thru some 15,000 fonts and some 9,000 styles I've finally got something close to what I want for my title (Wilhem Klingspor and Xenippa). Cities are labeled with Gaze, forts with Seven Swordsmen, ruins with Allembert, and terrain features with AL Afternoon Delight. The flower was fun to draw, a mash-up of primrose jasmine (color and shape) and jasmine (stamen) but the veins on the leaves gave me a lot of problems. I didn't want to do anymore veins so I cut out a bunch of leaves to save my sanity. I'm not very good at drawing frames, banners, or cartouches so this one is just about done unless you all see things that I need to correct. Oh and I also made up a bunch of new brushes to use as fort icons which was a ton of fun.
Last edited by Ascension; 06-20-2009 at 10:26 PM.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps