Dark Sun - Village of Arla

Hi all. This is my first actual try at making a map, using strictly photoshop. This village is set in Athas, a desolate land that... blah, blah, blah...

You might notice that instead of water it looks like sand. Well, that's the "silt sea". Fine powdery junk. It's supposed to blow about and drift and that is something I have yet to depict in the map.

Another thing is this village is a reclaimed ruins. Five buildings have been refubished but the rest of the 250 or so people living there are in tents. Not sure how to depict that. I'll probably need what looks like upwards of 70 tents if I'm interested in making it look accurate.

Also, there is going to be a single house overlooking the ville and I haven't any ideas for that as of yet.

What's been troubling me the most is how blurry the coast line is. I know it has to be some setting but every time I try to change it, ie get a harder line, the fill still gives it that radiant edge. If I weren't so concerned about ruining my drop dead gorgeous looks, I'd have pulled all of my hair out by now ;)

There's two maps... one without notes, one with. Opinions are hoped for, advice is prayed for.

Thanks for your time.

Have you checked out the Dundjinni forums? You will find a veritable treasure trove of just the sort of things you are looking for. I know there are at least two different types of tents, but there are probably more that I haven't looked for. Use their search feature at the top and type in tents.

As for the coast line, you said you are using a fill? Have you tried changing the angle of the fill? If you are using a blend mode, you can try turning off the eye in the left column to find which blend mode is causing the effect. Also, you could try adjusting the scale of the fill.

Since I'm not entirely sure what you are doing to achieve the effect I can't give you any more guidance than that.

Well, the Dundjinni forums should feel like a shameless little hussy. Cause I just used the heck out of it! Mwah ha ha ha ha!

Anywho. I think I may have it pretty close here. Coast line still isn't fixed and the "silt drifting" is no where near where I want it. On the coastline, I may have mispoken. I used the word "fill". What I mean is I'm using the paint bucket. I didn't see anything on that tool for scale, angle or blend mode. Unless you mean the layer blend mode but that doesn't click here.

Aside from that, I'd like to get general opinions. Thanks.

Ok, I can't honestly say what I did... I forget. But I got the coastline a bit more to my liking.

There are parts... like the lightest land mass layer with the cracked earth texture that almost look plastic.

Any suggestions?

Ok. This is Arla in all her glory. Started to post it in "finished maps" but I guess it goes here first.

Looks good! I'm digging it, and its great to see something very different too as far as atmosphere.

If you want to get rid of the plastic look, change the way the lighting on the texture is...you could also apply some monochromatic noise to the plastic layer...I would definitely apply some noise to the silt sea.

Thanks for the input! I made the changes you suggested and I lightened it up too. I know it's a minor thing but the pattern on the dock wasn't showing. Looked fine in photoshop but once I saved as a jpg and loaded it up here, it was very dark.

That is why it is generally better to use a lossless format. PNG is far superior to JPG unless you are dealing with actual photos and even then, it is debatable. Try using a PNG and see if the result looks better to you.

I like how this turned out and I'm glad Dundjinni proved to be a useful resource.

indeed, i try to use PNG 24 as much as possible when exporting my maps, not only is it a lossless format like RPMiller stated, but it also handles transparencies significantly better

So...

ehm...

No commentary on the map itself?

I'm posting a PNG now for when/if it gets moved to the "finished maps" thread.