My first WIP

[Gregorus Prime]

Let me see if I can remember:

First I made some water ripples using this tutorial I found. I should probably take some screenshots in case the Wayback Machine ever fails to find it:

http://web.archive.org/web/200802130...apostrophemo1/

I put a layer of noise above it, overlay blend, then merged down. I then made the layer seamless and tiled it on itself two times in a row. There's probably a way to do that in one step. After that I put some more noise on it and after that it becomes a little fuzzy. I do know I put together a gradient on overlay blend and merged it down to get the illusion that there was light coming from the upper right from some sort of sun-like object (possibly the sun). There were was a bit of screwing around with levels and curves, maybe more blurry overlays in different blending modes, I don't remember exactly what I did. I may have used the Light Effects filter, but I think I was sick of screwing around with that thing so I probably didn't. Anyway, blending mode of the final product is Soft Light, laid atop the other layers explained in RobA's tutorial.

I'm sure I could figure out exactly what I did, given enough time, but right now I'm working on labels, which should be pretty swift as there are no roads on the islands, just a few scattered villages and temples, and after that just text labels for the islands, landmarks, and seas. There will be much abuse of Tolkien's elven language and of course multiple translations into Common above that, written by the poor Imperial cartographer who's been assigned to file a report on these islands for the hundredth time in as many years.

EDIT:

Actually, the seashore effect is already there. It's subtle, but I suppose I could add yet another layer (poor GIMP!) to get some more shallows in there, to suggest that ship-destroying coral reefs might have as much to do with the islands' unconquered state as the elven magic that the superstitious military men on board the boats blame for their millennium-long tradition of failure.

EDIT: Replaced old final geographic version with one that includes shallows. Take a look and tell me what you think.

[Gregorus Prime]

Another status update. I wanted to get some opinions on my labels. The elven text would be the locals' names for things, with the handwritten script above being translations by the Imperial cartographer. I'm still making up names for the other landmarks on there, as I hope the elves would be more imaginative than to name everything "Tower of the Sun" or "Village where we caught this really big fish this one time, dude it was huge."

[Gidde]

I tend to have a real problem reading labels in red. The fonts look nice though, and the elven gold is perfect.

[Gregorus Prime]

Red is a better contrast against blue than white is. That's the only reason I chose it, really.

Speaking of contrast, now that I look at it I don't think brown works too well for the towns. I'll have to change that.

[Gregorus Prime]

Here it is, what I hope is the finished product.

I'll leave this up here for a day or so to solicit further comments, and if it meets everyone's approval I'll put it up in the Finished Maps section after that.

[Ascension]

I can't read the red labels but since you want it that way then c'est la vie. Otherwise, it looks good to me.

[Gregorus Prime]

Legibility is definitely a concern there. It's hard to find a calligraphic font that has a good balance of "looks cool" and "I can read it."

Here's another alternate version. Better? Or worse?

EDIT: After several iterations and different tweaks, I have what I think I can call my final product. See the attached image.

[Steel General]

I like the new font better than the red script (which I could barely read).

[LonewandererD]

Hey great map, I do have one gripe though. It's probably just me but I'm finding the compass and large white script in the top left to be very eyecatching, they seem to steal a little focus away from the rest of the map. I think its because they're quite bright by comparison, maybe making them a little less bright might work. But again, its probably just me.

Keep up the good work.

-D-

[Gidde]

The new font is much easier on my eyes too I like!