WIP - Aronbor... or Perdon

[Steel General]

I don't think so either...maybe worth creating a 'Stickey-d' post somewhere.

[pengod]

Really impressive map Ramah, would love to know how you created some of the 'visuals', by which I mean not the symbols and graphics of the map but more things like the aged an blurry stains the layering of composite depth is fantastic and gives it a real sense of age and use.

[Ramah]

Thank you Pengod.

There isn't really a lot of skill involved in mucking a map up in this way. A lot of the dark stuff is just some random markings gaussian blurred and on low opac. I have several layers of a clouds filter, adjusted through curves and again, really low opac. I also usually stroke these clouds with a 1px brush on another layer so I can have a slight edge on some.
The large stains I just drew in a random shaped stain, mirrored it over the fold and then copied this around the map where it would be because of the folding and placed them at varying levels of opacity. I drew around the stain with a small brush to create an edge to it and blurred/copied/sharpened etc. in different places. Because of the dirtiness I'd already got into the image this stain looks more varied than it is.
Lastly, I've given the stain an extra layer of the crumple texture to make them show up more over it.

Changing the subject somewhat... I was happily checking out the news online this morning when my screen went blank. Using my daughters old analogue monitor I found that my own monitor had decided to kick the bucket. As it was pretty old I decided to bite the bullet and go get a new one. So now I have a brand new, widescreen monitor which I have to say... I don't like. The colours are all wrong. It's too bright and I don't just mean the image brightness... the backlight seems brighter than my old one. It's glaring. I do wonder if this will impact on any map I decide to do from now on. :S

[Gidde]

I noticed the same thing with my shiny sorta-new monitor. I had to turn the brightness way down in order to see what everyone else seems to see.

[Immolate]

Even now that I understand your maps better, I still like this as much. This one is brilliant!

[Ramah]

Thank you very kindly, Immolate.

Right, I will definitely be posting this map up in the finished section tomorrow afternoon. I won't get a chance to work on it tomorrow night as it's my daughter's birthday/halloween party and Sunday marks the start of NaNoWriMo so... tomorrow afternoon it is.

Since my last post I've added a bunch more labels. I still have quite a few more to do but it won't kill me to let it go as it is now on this front. Some of the forests and out of the way rivers will probably remain unnamed but meh.
I've added a marker for a church/abbey and one for the ruins. I've also added a few more ruins up in the north.
I've reapplied the coastal details after the grunging as they were kinda getting lost under everything else and the land edge was losing definition.
Added a few more bits of Marginalia.

Edit: Heh.. I hit submit before I had done. Ah well... not a lot more to say really. All that I have left to do is a little more of what I've done since last update and maybe add one more small forest in an area where it's bugging me.
Thanks for anyone and everyone who has given C&C in this thread and sorry for my numerous updates as I've been going along - as I said in the Vaniya thread... it really helps me feel like I've reached a milestone when I post a new image and it kinda keeps me motivated.

See you all tomorrow in the finished maps section.

[Ramah]

Final image posted in the Finished Maps thread here

Thanks everyone for your help.

[Ramah]

Ok, in the spirit of the title of this thread I've decided to carry on and make the Perdon regional as my next map. Unlike what I did with Aronbor I won't keep updating the images to show progress (I promise. ). It will be in the exact same style so if anyone is at all interested in how it will be built up then they can just check out the preceding pages in this thread.
I'll just post a beginning shot now and then the next shot will be posted in the finished maps area upon completion.

I'd already laid the groundwork on the base map at the same time as I started Aronbor so I figured I would just rattle off a nice finished landmass ready to be filled in with places and labels and see how it looks.

So, here is the result of about two and a half hours work in total...



As you can see, I've run it through all the effects I used for the Aronbor map (minus the big stains). The longest time spent on an individual element in this was separating each individual country into different colours (there are seven in all on show). There isn't enough difference in the colours to make them stand out at the moment but I can fiddle with that later.
I think before I continue I am going to go back to the base and adjust the rivers which are far too bobbly as all I did was roughly draw over the original blown-up rivers from the world map.

I think I have already shaved off weeks of time that I spent on the Aronbor map and I fully expect that if I could devote time only to this then I would have it knocked out in a couple of weeks. Unfortunately right now I am supposed to be working on NaNoWriMo. Hehe.

I'm kinda worried because I KNOW when I look at this that I am going to want to do the rest. This map overlaps the Aronbor map and is virtually yelling at me to "Stitch here!" :S

I really do want to do a city map, Gandwarf. Honest.

[Ramah]

Bah! I said I wouldn't post an update on this until it was done but meh, I thought I'd squeeze in a single mid-way update. The next one will be in the finished maps forum for sure but I still have a long way to go.

Right... It does seem that since I first did the Vaniya map some of my kingdoms have been at war. The young pretender kingdom of Mirkesh has suffered crushing defeats all round and has now ceased to be. Perdon has aggressively expanded into the north of the former country while Doras has mopped up the south. Unfortunately, while the Dorans were busy fighting in their east they failed to protect their western borders and the Romarans have conquered the entire country west of the river Hiemolin...

The map is now a little closer to how I originally had it. Both Mirkesh and Doras were invented at the time of drawing the kingdom borders as I just couldn't find a way to do them that pleased me. As I've been drawing this new map it occurred to me how I can change it and I'm much more pleased with it now. Bye-bye Mirkesh. Doras gets to stay but that's ok as it takes up some of the area that Caprinon used to occupy (orginally there were three Silver Kingdoms - Asrinon, Caprinon and Inderinon).

So.. that being said here is the map as it stands right now...



It is now currently at a stage where the original Vaniyan section is completely updated to the Aronbor adjusted style. All the labels that were on the original map are on this one in roughly the same area. All the forests, hills and rivers are there.

So from now on I'm into new territory on this map. I plan on adding a few more hills in a few places but not many. I will add quite a few more forested areas and possibly a few small rivers but nothing major like on Aronbor. And then there's loads of towns, cities and other places of interest to add. And labels, labels, labels.

All the labels and markers that are currently in are not finalised btw, and will probably all get changed, tweaked, altered etc. as work progresses.

[Gandwarf]

Looks good as always. Glad you posted an update!
Is the Sleeping Lady a vulcano?