This is looking very cool already! Love the shapes and swirls you have going here, and I also rather like the descriptions - I hope you'll find a way to inject them into your final map too!
Hey Guild
After a break from this, I am here to present my latest work in progress. For now it has no name, but it's going to be the first map made for my worldbuilding project (high-fantasy).
PARALELOstep1.jpg
This is the simplistic approach, mainly to see how it will feel. I haven't put in any labels, etc, but I've made some notes regarding the land. Next step is coming up with some labels.
step10.jpg
And this is a style test using some elements from my former map, along with a polar grid I made myself.
What do you guys think so far?
Last edited by Alturax; 03-30-2016 at 10:12 AM.
This is looking very cool already! Love the shapes and swirls you have going here, and I also rather like the descriptions - I hope you'll find a way to inject them into your final map too!
Check out my portfolio!
This is really nice, like the scale of the elements and inland sea. Nice Job, look forward to seeing this come together.
The "comments" are gold.
Really great Coastlines.
Actually, it looks very remarkably like an idea I'd had a little while back for my own map, insofar as the general land shape goes. You have some interesting regions developing it looks like though!
Update #1
Did a style test for ocean and tried hand-drawing in the mountains. Not too happy with them atm, I'l try to redo them a little better soon. They are quite faint!
TheStep1.jpg
Very nice. What is the "canvas" texture you are using?
Like how the Rhumba lines are both on land and the sea but are much more visibile on the Sea.
I REALLY love the watermark-compass! That's actually something I always thought about doing.
The texture is a little too strong for my taste, though. Maybe because the lines of the hills don't follow it, if you know what I mean. I'd probably tone down the opacity a bit.
How big is your file at what dpi, btw? I tend to overdo it myself, that'S why I'm asking, since the map seems huge.
Just to answer your questions since I don't have any progress:
@nobodi12 - Thank you! As far as the texture goes I basically got a nice and simple parchment texture off of Google. Then I messed around with the Saturation and Vibrance, in Image Settings, until I found a decent color. But I think what stands out the most is that little woven texture I put in. That's a Bevel&Emboss Layer Style, with a texture of woven something. I can post a tutorial for this later, if you'd like.
As far as the rhumb lines go, I have two separate layers for them. The "Ocean Lines" layer is placed behind the main "Land Mask" layer. It's set to Multiply, which makes it black/dark blue. Then, there's a "Land Lines" layer. For this one, I duplicated the Ocean Lines layer, Ctrl clicked the Land Mask layer (to create a selection based on the contents of the layer). This got me a selection based on the land mask itself. Then I inverted it, to have a selection based on all the Ocean, and hit delete. This gives me a set of Rhumb Lines that are limited to the land. I set those to Overlay, to give them that effect. I fiddled with the Opacity to make them a bit more faded. Hope this helps!
@Llannagh - Thanks! The texture is indeed a bit rough, I had mostly ignored it because of how focused I was on the placement of mountains and such (tunnel vision ) I'l check to see what I can do to it. Thanks for pointing it out
As far as DPI goes, I always make my maps 300 DPI, and I go for a size of 4000x6400 (the files are smaller because I excluded the border 100px border).
However, to make a map feel very big, you often don't need huge filesizes. To make a map seem large, mostly it has to do with the size of the elements, like mountains, rivers, etc. You try to focus on relative scale. If a mountain is that small, then the rest has to be huge! This is something I used to struggle with, but I've come to realise this, purely off of need, since my poor computer nearly explodes when I edit larger documents.
Hope this answers everything