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I think you did a pretty good job with the textures, it almost works for me. A little bit of advice. Having a brutal change for the forests and mountains could work but you should try some transition for the other textures.
Patriam
I'd like to hear opinions and ideas for a fantasy world map I'm trying to draw and get right. It's hard because I'm not really a cartographer, though I do like maps in general and have tried drawing before by hand, with amateurish results of course.
Anyway here's some context. Some 15 years ago I drew this map I wanted to use in my RPG campaigns. I was too ambitious in drawing the whole continent, which quickly made me confused and incapable of filling all blanks. The outline and main story of the world was created, but that was all. I'll try to paste the map below (I know it's not much):
In 2006, apparently I tried making the same map work again, now digital. I don't quite recall how it went, but by chance I found the last file I used a few days agi. I probably tried using some fantasy cartographer app or another, and finally settled for Corel Draw which I was more used to. The thing is, I couldn't advance beyond the general outline of the continent, and even then, it doesn't look great. Here's what I came up with (I beg you ignore names of places):
Then, few weeks ago, I needed a fantasy campaign setting to work with a new roleplaying game I'm developing and... I looked up that old map, decided to finish it. Obviously my problem wasn't merely filling blanks here: looking at image above, what was done was barely detailed, and I couldn't decide how to solve the problem of picturing forests mountains and other geographics landmarks. I'm not an artist at all, only thing I think I can manage well are these fractal-like coastlines I draw. To be honest I'm biased towards hand-drawn maps, but even if I could make it great by hand, I don't fancy relying on paper these days, and I can't hand-draw on screen. So hand-drawing on paper was left aside for now.
The more I looked the old WIP, the less I liked it. I saw it lacked realistically positioned hills and foliage, and what little was done was probably irreversibly lacking detail. But I had to give it a shot, so...
First thing, I thought maybe a way to picture the several different natural landscapes would be applying different textures on the map. After some trial and error, even the textures that were passable weren't saving this mess... I more or less gave up at this stage (seriously, ignore the names of places):
The mountains were terrible, and even if they weren't, everything just felt bare and I couldn't figure out how to properly mix the textures. To be honest, I liked better what I had before I started today.
I went out and when I was back, decided to try again, at least try to detail everything a little more, see if it helped. That helped, in my view. I stopped trying to use transparency/degrade textures, added a lot more geographic features. At least it started to make some more sense to me, geographically. Here's what I came up with:
In terms of detail, I could live with this map. It still lacks in textures or any representation of mountains at all, but at least now the continent looks like something you'd need a while to explore. What's more, I turned off all textures and the map looks like this:
The problem is, I'm not even sure the textures are a better solution. After detailing the map, perhaps I should just stick to what I know, which is the simplest vector/layers mapping, textures off.
So, in case anyone has any input, insight on this, I'd be very grateful. I want this to work. But in light of my amateur skills, do you think I should stick to the simpler vector mapping? Am I missing something in using textures? Any other ideas?
Thanks in advance.
I think you did a pretty good job with the textures, it almost works for me. A little bit of advice. Having a brutal change for the forests and mountains could work but you should try some transition for the other textures.
Well, first things first. Your first efforts in cartography were certainly better than mine. That hand-drawn sketch looks really promising and way better than anything that I could draw by hand. And the colored maps aren't bad at all either.
Secondly, have you tried using one of the many tutorials in the tutorial section? I don't know if you have photoshop, but there are also many tuts for GIMP, which is a free program that can put out equally good results. Looking at your textured maps I could recommend these tutorials that shoot for a similar style:
https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ead.php?t=8086
https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ad.php?t=18280
https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ead.php?t=1142
But there are many more, including different styles that try to mimic a hand drawn look by using various brushes for mountains and forests. Something like this, which belongs to this tutorial. Now I know that throwing around links and tutorials isn't exactly the advice you were looking for, but as far as deciding on which style to use we can't make the decision for you. I'd suggest to browse through the whole section, pick a tutorial that fits to your likings and have a go at it. I think you could learn a lot from these, including which style fits best for your map.
Welcome and happy painting!
~~Rongar
Thanks for the tip. That was my initial idea. I gave up on that, but I'll give it another pass. A way to quickly do vector border transitions eluded me so far.Originally Posted by thomrey
I didn't know about these tutorials. Thank you for suggesting, I'll give them a try this weekend. That first one seems like exactly what I'd like to do. :-D
I'll post my results.
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