WIP - Velaedin Empire

[Gidde]

Fixed the rogue hill issue and put shading on all of the existing forest (plus added a bit). I also got rid of the crinkly-parchment texture and put a generic canvas texture on it temporarily. The final will have a parchment-type texture of some kind, this is just a working texture because without anything it was jarring.

[McKenney]

This map is still looking awesome. You're tempting me to make one like it for my wall!

What I meant about the rivers is that they are a bit smooth in their depiction--they need some bleed lines to look penned. Slight pixelation may do the trick, but I'm no expert on filters. Maybe play around with various noise-generating techniques?

[Gidde]

Thanks! And cool - that's what I was hoping you'd meant. I have a plan/technique for bleeding everything, just waiting until the line drawing is finished to implement it, so that it's all consistent. Now back to place more tiny trees ....

[Coyotemax]

Aren't forest placements the most fun part?? WHEEEEEEE

Okay, sarcasm aside, i love the way this is coming along. I look forward to seeing how you approach the ink bleeding effect.

And in regards to forests, you might seriously want to consider checking out Fluesopp's (and ramah's variant of) automatic forester. I'm about to give another test myself and see how the latest version does.

[Gidde]

Thanks And I saw that automatic forester thread after I had already done half my trees, so I figured I may as well finish them. It's crazy how much the guild has grown the last couple months, I'm finding it hard to keep up with all the posts even after I marked everything read that I missed over the holidays. I'll definitely be checking it out before I do the next hand-drawn map.

[Gidde]

Well, Ramah, it turned out that you were right. Those hills were such a pain that I lost my momentum for a while there. I finally waved the white flag and made up some brushes.

Hills, forest, and the first pass on cities/labels done in this update.

[Soixante]

It looks great, but it's very dark. Perhaps lighten things up a little?

[Coyotemax]

Holycrap, I love the detail in this. partly because it reminds me of Ramah's maps, partly because it reminds me of my own

And yes, the quantity of hills you have in here would have driven you insane if you tried doing them all without using brushes.. and there's no room left in the asylum for you

[edit] on closer review, i noticed that the one mountain range (center top) is darker than the others, like there's an extra level of shading detail in there that's not present in the other mountains..

[Gidde]

Thanks Soixante, and I agree -- it's way too dark. Comes from doing the color on a monitor with the brightness set too high. I'm working on that next.

CM, your eye is good --- too good. Those were the first mountains I did, and as I grew into the style, they got lighter. I was hoping it wasn't too noticeable, since I really didn't want to redo them, hehe. I'll put that on the list for tweakage.

[Coyotemax]

I suspected as much, I've done the exact same thing - And hated the thought of redoing them.. Yeah. I know the road you're on!