Looks fabulous.
Hi all,
I've been away from the forum for a while and thought I should check in to show what I've been working on. It is far from done, as I hope to apply a pretty high level of detail, but I think it is far enough along that you can get a sense of where I am going with this iteration. Taking cues from Tear's exceptional Saderan tutorial, I am trying to make a richly contoured, painterly/realistic iteration of the Known World. This has so far been a major Photoshop learning experience for me - I'm amazed at some of the painting techniques possible with that program.
Known World - Tear tutorial v1.jpg
Happy New Year.
Last edited by bengaijin; 01-23-2010 at 12:07 PM. Reason: typo
_ben
Looks fabulous.
Yeah, might be the coolest landmasses I've seen around here.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
Oh my.. I think the bottom just fell out over here. I can't wait to see where this goes; I'm quite intrigued.
-asp
My current worldbuilding experiment(s):
Geidor
--------------------------------------------
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
-W.B. Yeats
This is quite nice so far, looking forward to seeing it develop.
My Finished Maps | My Challenge Maps | Still poking around occasionally...
Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Honestly, I just drew them by hand in my notebook when I was supposed to be paying attention in a particularly dry meeting. Then later I scanned my sketch and added a fair bit of detail tracing it in CAD. That's my method in total.
-ben
_ben
I've had little time to work on this map, and it seems to be evolving in actual geological time. So here is an update a very long time coming.
The map background is very close to done. All that remains is the insertion of a number of rivers, and some polishing of the coastal shelves in the seas.
The labelling will be an entirely separate exercise. I am still on the fence as to whether I should do all of my labelling and notation in photoshop or illustrator. I have all of the labels completed in an illustrator base file, so it would really be a quite simple matter to bring the jpeg in underneath them, but I wonder if I will be able to achieve the same level of richness/subtlety with text and icons as I would in photoshop. Any thoughts from the jury?
_ben
Known World - Tea&#.jpg
_ben
So...
I believe this is the fully finished "painting" of the Known World. Rivers have been added, continental shelves drawn in, colours and textures tweaked. I would love any feedback. How can I improve this thing?
On an unrelated note, I recall seeing a thread recently (last couple of weeks) where someone was converting a continent sized hex map to a more realistic style, but today when looking for it, I found nothing. My recollection was that the landforms were pretty cool, and I wanted to look at it again. It seemed like a fully fledged campaign world, not so much a work in progress from the world-building side. Does this ring a bell? Can anyone point me towards a map that meets this description?
Anyhow, here's the current update:
Known World - Tea&#.jpg
_ben