You could try Pasis his mountain style:
http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=4405
Trying something a bit different (for me, anyway) here. I've got the land 'climate bands' colors and look the way I want them, but I'm not altogether happy with the look of the oceans. Any suggestions or good ocean patterns people want to offer me are more than welcome.
Also, what's a good method for making mountains in PS that would look good on a map like this? I don't want to use icons, and frankly, I don't know where to start looking through the tutorials here to find what I need. Help!
You could try Pasis his mountain style:
http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=4405
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Gandwarf has fallen into shadow...
Pasis' tutorial is a good choice, a bunch of folks have had incredible results with it.
I also have a short tutorial in there some where that uses stacked, pattern-filled layers.
As far as your water goes, I don't think it's so much the pattern as maybe the colors. It looks more like clouds and sky than water. You might try some darker blues.
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What I see is that the lighter water doesn't follow the landmasses...it's arbitrary. I would suggest using a low opacity airbrush to lighten the water around the coasts and darkening the water that is nowhere near the coasts before using the filter.
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Pasis's technique is good, but it requires a little more skill than others I think. It can be rather frustrating trying to get the layers to blend nicely if you're not used to doing much hand-painting.
Thanks for the tips, guys. I think I'm going to try out Pasis's tut and see what I can do... If the results look halfway decent I'll post 'em here.
Well, that tutorial, while AWESOME! was not exactly what I was looking for. It did give me some ideas though, and I eventually opted for something a bit simpler. I also changed up the patterning on the land and sea to something a bit more uniform; just a hint of wasteland in the north.
Next up is rivers. Think I'll hand draw those with my shiny new tablet.
These mountains will certainly do as well.
Check out my City Designer 3 tutorials. See my fantasy (city) maps in this thread.
Gandwarf has fallen into shadow...
What do you think about the new sea texture? Better? Worse? Meh?
I like the previous one better because it has more contrast and therefore more character. But they both need to be way darker, I think. They look like cloudy blue skies with that powder blue dominating. In a satellite-photo style, I think you want satellite-photo seas. Pale blue seas is for National Geo maps and old globes.
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