Nice idea, M. It would be quite refreshing to have a non-magical MacGuffin in this particualr campaign.
Thanks for the other practical advice too, I shall ponder...
This is looking pretty sharp. I like the painterly style and dig the black and white thing you've done. Rivers get a bit odd as mentioned. Never too late to ret-con those, now that you have the benefit of the River Police's gentle tutelege. Are the geographical borders defined enough that they can be drawn on? Might be worth doing. Also, city symbols, points of interest, etc. would add to the map, IMO.
Since this is supposed to reflect, in-game, the style of a "collector's map" I think you'll want to think about what such a person would value highly. Looking at some of the maps of this type from our own world you can see that they tended to be highly decorative with fancy borders, heraldry, mystical things out where nobody has explored yet, etc. BUT they might do things differently in your world. Maybe maps are more like art and the cartographers are in their impressionistic phase; so they use highly accurate costal representations combined with impressionistic rendering methods. Might be a good way to think about it...and a good reason it's being handed off to your PCs at this point. Heck you might even be able to make it into a MacGuffin. Maybe somebody wants to steal it because it's so valuable - a one-of-a-kind Carto Famoso original!
M
Nice idea, M. It would be quite refreshing to have a non-magical MacGuffin in this particualr campaign.
Thanks for the other practical advice too, I shall ponder...
Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work I go..
On the rivers, what about giving them a very slight blur to make them blend in with the terrain a little bit more? And as mentioned, there's some river violations, but I'm sure the Police will be along shortly to school ya.
The scale is excellent; nothing more to add there, really.
I'm not liking the text too much, personally. The city names text is just hard enough to read that it makes it slightly annoying (maybe use a 'neater' script font?), while that thick white outline around the country names is very jarring.
Hi AP,
nice map, really like the subtle style of the mountains and threes. Yes, the river police would probably tell you to make sure that your lakes only have one river going out - other than that they look nice ... also really like the scale
Things to look into :
• I'd change the font and size of the mayor countries, the font would benefit from a more handdrawn style and loosing the white outline, I know it makes the text stand out, but I don't think outline was used very much at the time
• Add at least one city per country
• Add a symbol for where the cities are - a black circle will do
otherwise looking great - your players will love it - great prop
regs tilt
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I like where you're going with this. However, I agree with tilt about the font. If you don't have the right font there are thousands of free ones out there on the web (see links below). Also, definitely lose the white border on the text. Not sure what program you are using but for more readability try masking out mountains and forests (dark features but not the background or ground color) for about 2px out from large text and 1px from smaller text and symbols. This will make the text stand out w/o being interruptive. If you need pointers on masking PM me.. it can be a little confusing if you're new to it. And, perhaps rounding out some of the corners on the rivers and applying a very fine medium grey holding line on the river edges would help anchor them. I tend to favor the rivers being darker than the land or have some type of definition and in this case because they empty into a light ocean, i'd do a gradient at the river mouth going from the lighter ocean to the darker rivers. Now that's obviously just a preference but if you prefer light rivers i think you'd be all right subtly defining the edges of them. Do it on an independent layer so you can delete it if you dont like it (0:
Another thing that would help the overall cohesion of the map is to create a texture layer... for example, canvas at very fine setting then applying a slight gaussian blur (about .4 or .5) to kill the moire & repetition effect. Put that layer above the rest and set it to soft light or hard light (40% or so).. play around with the settings and see what looks good. You can also duplicate that layer and rotate it 0.5 degrees or so.. not much at all and try different combinations of the two. You don't want to obscure your map so it should be subtle, but this can get rid of that computer-ey look that we all try to avoid regardless of our "style". Attached is an example of a map i made using a subtle canvas texture overlay, more evident in the right or blown up portion.
http://www.elifont.com/
http://www.fontspace.com/
http://www.identifont.com/index.html
http://www.typenow.net/a.htm
http://www.fontyukle.com/en/listele.php?harf=A
http://www.newfonts.net/index.php?pa=show_font&id=9
http://www.searchfreefonts.com/fonts/a4.htm
Last edited by a2area; 04-13-2010 at 11:53 AM.
Wow, a lot more to do. I guess that this heirloom might be held up in probate for another couple of weeks. Thanks everyone, I'll get on with it over the next few days.
Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work I go..
I like the impressionistic style going on here
I've been looking at the map and pondering what I could offer in the way of suggestions, but as it stands, there's a lot of great suggestions already made and I can't think of much that hasn't been touched on.
About the only thing I could add is that it might be worth a shot to try tapering some of your wider rivers..
My finished maps
"...sometimes the most efficient way to make something look drawn by hand is to simply draw it by hand..."
Okay I know it doesn't look like I've done much, but here is the next installment! I have dealt with the river issues. I have settled on the scale. Still not 100% on the compass rose but maybe that will seem clearer once the fonts are finished. I have experimented with fonts for the city names. Please offer feedback if you think any of the fonts are suitable.
I have not played with the font texture, city symbols or masks yet. I want to finalise the text styles first. Comments invited.
Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work I go..
The one for Caritas is nice, I think it's got a good look for this style (elegant, but not overdone). I love your scale marker, it fits nicely (better than the compass rose, in my opinion)
My finished maps
"...sometimes the most efficient way to make something look drawn by hand is to simply draw it by hand..."
I agree; that font for Caritas looks the best IMO.