Untitled Campaign Map

[Coyotemax]

No, no further work.

it's done

If you check up a few posts, I put in a link to the final product

Oh, i guess I should have closed off the thread with a post mentioning that it has been completed, final posting in the finished map forum here:
http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...8-Campaign-Map

Woohoo!

[Coyotemax]

Juggernaut is correct, I like to have the areas laid out with colours so I can see how they're going to overlap, what I want to put where, and get an idea when zoomed way out as to whether it looks reasonably viable in a geologic sense.

As for the actual colours and such, I have done some where I do all the detail work first then do colours at the end. But having worked in both ways, I've decided I like getting at least the basic colours in first so I have a better visual in my minds eye on how things will look when they're done, plus in cases like this it can give the client an idea of how the final product will come together with the colours.. the Dark Lands map is an even more extreme example of that, I also wanted to make sure as I was drawing that the blood smudging effect I was using wouldn't interfere with other layers, and so on. The other thing this allows is that if I get worn out from working on one aspect, I can always put time into textures and still progress on the work instead of taking an outright break. yay for efficiency

Incidentally, I used a 200px (with the image size what it is, that's a relatively medium size) soft brush for the terrain guides with each colour on a separate layer in their own folder, then set the opacity/blending modes so that I could see what I was doing without it interfering with the rest of the work, and turn on/off each layer if I feel the need Might be a bit overkill, but I find it's more flexible than doing all the guidelines on the same layer. You just need to go "D'oh, I wish I would have done that differently" once
I guess you could say I'm evolving my workflow

[edit] Oh yeah, mountain update.. basic shadows are done, about to start detail work!

[moutarde]

Not overkill at all. Through much trial and error (and massive amounts of redrawing) I've learned that there's no such thing as too many layers

[Coyotemax]

How's this for overkill: the mountains have 5 layers that build up to the effect from the earlier test image.

Basic Outline (upside down V and a squiggly line going down the middle for the light/dark transition area)
Dark Outline, where I darken the edges of the darkside of the mountain
Dark Shading, where I fill in the shadowed portion
Light Detail, where I add in crevasses/etc and give it some texture on the light side
Light Shadows, where I shade the lightside details

And somewhere in there (usually the light detail and light shadows) i throw some bits down along the valleys and lower slopes in the space between one mountain and another to fill in smaller spaces. Some of the larger spaces will be dealt with on the Hill layer groups

There's a mini tutorial somewhere in the Tutorials forum that introduced me to the style.. I added my own twist by separating each step to it's own layer. I can't find it right now though, but I'll take another peek in a bit. I saved the png attachment and keep it open on the second monitor while I work for ease of reference

[moutarde]

Again, not overkill If anything that you're doing could destroy something you've already done if you run out of undo states, it should be on its own layer. Unless you like redrawing stuff when you decide it could look a little better

[Coyotemax]

The downside is when you're not paying full attention, and put something on a layer it's not supposed to be, and don't notice for 20 mins

[Ascension]

I do that all of the time...usually I draw for an hour on my layer where I keep my basic palette color choices and when I go to hide that layer to see the thing in its full glory - all of the stuff I just did disappears and I say "crap".

[Coyotemax]

Luckily in this case it's just the main shading layer containing details meant for the lightside detail. If i really felt like putting in the work I could separate things out by cutting to a new layer then merging to the layer it's supposed to be on. But it's not that much so I'm gonna leave it for now I think.

Rough detail work is done, about to start on the fine detail Once I get that in, I'll post an update. this is really starting to take shape!

Oh yeah, another thing.. now that I have a tablet, I'm really missing the callouses I used to have built up from holding pens and pencils back when I did my celtic work

[Coyotemax]

Almost finishd the mountains.. I'm actually going back through and filling them in with more peaks to make them more consistent with the test range.

I also decided to play around with the textures a bit, I'm still completely unhappy with them even though I like the idea behind them.

Incidentally, I found a new parchment texture making technique.. after using wax paper on the baking sheets last night, I decided to keep the sheet and scan it. Folded in half it made a great scan.

And I found the original driver for my scanner that allows DPI's other than 150 and 300.. So what I've been doing now is scanning 1/4 of the page at a time at 600DPI, that gives me 5 scans per sheet instead of 1 (4 at 1/4 size and 1 at full). Woot!!

[Karro]

Cool. That's a pretty sweet-sounding technique for generating a parchment texture.