Laramis, at Long Last
I "finished" this map some time ago, after two WIP threads and lots of advice from lots of helpful people. It was created as a campaign map for my friend Greg. I turned it over to him and he sat on it for a month, then got it back to me last week. Sadly, I cannot walk away from a map for a month or so and not feel compelled to fix half of it.
The first WIP thread didn't really go anywhere, but not for lack of effort. I was stuck in an experimental phase of my self-education and tried a lot of things that didn't please me. Essentially, I wanted to find a good symbolic style after having done quite a few satellite maps and wasn't hitting the note for one reason or the other.
http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...hlight=laramis
Eventually, I was rescued by a challenge and left it alone. When I returned, I was so dissatisfied with everything on the map that I simply scrapped it and restarted.
http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...hlight=laramis
This time, I was looking for results, not technique, and the progress was much more satisfactory. I still got wrapped around the axle on mountains, which have always been my bete noir (along with a lot of other folks, I know), but I eventually came upon a bevel technique that allowed me to hand-craft the mountains and still keep them fairly realistic. It was important that I be able to create them where I wanted them and in the orientation I wanted them because I was trying to match the original for placement and purpose. "The Spine" on the western edge is supposed to be functionally impassable, and I think I managed to accomplish that believably.
So after a month of waiting for mark-ups from Greg, I got the map back and quickly decided that I needed to redo the cities, which were inspired by Ascension's Jasmine Coast map. They still are, but are less like them now. I also completely redid the lables which I was unhappy with in retrospect. I added some toys and reinvented the forests which were originally understated to the point of looking like a stain.
The map has become slow to work with because of the sheer number of layers, so it is good that it feels done. I hope you enjoy it.
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