New Dawn of the West: Redesign Part 2

[Tear]

Just a suggestion, but you might want to consider redoing the southwestern coastline. It's kind of too straight and rectangularish.

That one:

[AslanC]

That is actually based on something found on a real map, but I am too tired to think of where on Earth it is right now.

[AslanC]

And while we continue to move ahead on the two artistic style maps, here is a new unlabeled hex map to whet your appetites

[Coyotemax]

Ok, birds eye view looks complete, pending labels!

I redid the textures completely for this one, spent a full day setting them up.

I think the result is a lot more crisp and effective than the last one, I just looked at it again and the original now looks blurry and blah to me

Here she goes..

[Steel General]

Looks great, especially the "Crater Bay".

The only thing that looked off to me was that some of the smaller islands in the south seem to 'float' a bit (though that might just be me).

[LonewandererD]

Whoa, nice work, you two can be really proud of this.

I hate being the one to point out something but i do agree with Steel General in that some of the islands do seem to float a bit in the south.

But other than that nice work. That whirlpool ( I think its a whirlpool) in the straights near the south looks good, how'd you do it, i've been thinking of adding a whirlpool to one of my maps.

-D-

[Coyotemax]

I've been working on this so much, I knew I was missing something, thats why I posted an update here instead of moving it to finished Thanks for pointing that out both of you. I think it's because the forests on those islands have a bit of dropshadow to make them pop out a bit, but in this case that's working against the effect.

And yes, i'm proud of the crater

The whirlpool (yes, you got that right) is.. let me find the original post where I talked about it..

"The whirlpool is from a japanese ukiyo-e (sp?) painting of an area of rough sea (found it on google, after slogging through about 40 pages of whirlpool brand dishwasher picutres, heh)"

I don't think i kept the original pic though.. and I'm not about to go looking for it again - i want that half hour of my life back!! But once i had the pic, i lassoed the whirlpool portion with a 10 or 20 px feather, and cleaned up the result with an eraser around the edges, then set it to multiply, and adjusted the transparency a bit.

Not hard really, except for the searching

Ok, off to adjust islands...

[Coyotemax]

Ok, adjustments made! Dropshadow was indeed th culprit. Looks ok on the main continent still, but I set the island to 0 distance, and smacked it down.

I also played a bit with the ocean layers, i think this is a bit more evocative.

Unless there are any other obvious errors, I'm about ready to call it.

[msa]

This map is just amazing. I'm so glad you two decided to go apesh*t with it

My thoughts on the coastline: in reality, god and nature are far less standardized about coasts than we are here. There are a lot of large sections of earth coastlines that are completely flat with no appreciable deviations. Look at large sandy areas in north africa and the saudia arabian peninsula for examples. You can make a case that we make maps here that are prettier than the ones nature made, but for the most part I think if it looks good its fine. And I personally think the coasts here look fine.

[Karro]

There's something that's bugging me a bit about the coastal transition. Right now it's such a hard transition... doesn't look quite right, to me. Maybe, I'm thinking, a very thin, slightly blurred sandy-beach-colored stroke would soften it just the right way?

Otherwise, this is looking great!