Maps

[Hilarious Joke]

I like em both!

 

[Culhwch]

That second one is really good, Ryden. I love the hand-drawn look. My hand-drawn maps are woeful, and the ones I've done with Paintshop are adequate but a little sterile...

 

[Hilarious Joke]

Post them!

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

Let's see some more maps! I always enjoyed making them.

Here's one I made about a year ago for a story I planned. Whole lotta countries.

I'm not really that happy with the lettering, and it's a bit too colourful. Watercolours, pencils and photoshop.

Here's a more recent one, this one's nicer.


I like how this one came out, a bit more gritty and dark. It's done completely in pencil and then coloured in Photoshop. I was gonna start adding borders and place names but I lost inspiration.

I think they are good too. However the use of these modern gadgets (pencils and water colours) is to be frowned on. It's so unfair on the rest of us for a start. I for one can't afford them and it's appalling that you 'portray' unabashed your wealth in this manner. I suppose you're one of the decadent few who can afford to use real paper in this time of crisis, global warming and carbon footprints.

 

[jezelf]

Nice work. Naming of things is the difficult thing for me. Do people pluck them out of the air or do they have structure? I expect it would be to have some culture and base it on that - like you would get with different names for places in India compared to Germany, China and the UK.

I find it difficult to come up with one cool sounding name, let alone hundreds. Also once you have one I guess you need to check it doesn't already exist by running it in Google.

If you want to explore maps further, there's some nice looking maps over at the Cartographer's Guild forum and tutorials for that type of map making. Unfortunately that particular tutorial does use software they you need to buy but one one them is affordable - Fractual Terrains Pro (among other products you might find useful ) Have a look here's a PDF file and a Tutorial on that too.

You might need to register and log in to see thumbnails on CG. There's also a forum that show cases people's finished maps

The same place has a good sub-forum for tutorials and 'how tos', with links to You Tube vids etc. They cover various software - Gimp, Photoshop, etc all can be found in their resource section.

I seem to flying a flag for this place, but I just found it last week and it's helped me loads in my map making.

For anyone interested in an ambitious project, check this out. It's to make Tolkien's Middle Earth map up into a 3D version. Not like the one in the films, but more in keeping with those 3D renders you see. The last updates were in December last year so don't know if it was abandoned, or still in progress, some of the renders certainly look promising (these last two links are BIG images)

here's their home page, ( I think it's the same people )but it's not very well put together. A bit difficult to navigate or know what's what. Don't seem to have much content.

As an artist I'm more of a visual person, so eventually I'll love to do my entire world like this! A lot to learn to do it, though - but imagine flying about getting the feel of your story even more! For example; You could see where battles would take place which who will have the advantage, how weather could effect locations where settlements would naturally start.

One other thing I'm thinking of doing is going right to the roots. Starting with Tectonic Plates, then work out how the continents separate and there for how my cultures develop and migrate. It'll all be just for my background for a story, but could add more depth to it.

All depends just how far you want to take it I guess.


cheers
jez

 

[Naryaló S dú]

I think Ryden's second one looks better without borders and such. I myself prefer the old pencil without photoshop or anything. This way I can put in a little tiny detail in everything (Especially when I draw city maps 3 dimensionally, gotta put detail in the buildings), and not let color cover anything or mess it up.

 

[Erin99]

Ryden, those two maps are excellent! I can'[t decide which I love more. One looks so eye-catching; the other looks very natural. Fantastic work.

And I'd love to see Cul's work, too.

 

[Culhwch]

Maybe tonight when I get home from work. Though I do have them on me (a few weeks ago I abused my work privileges to print out some A3 copies) I'll need to do some resizing...

 

[Lioness]

Here we go...my first go(es) at using Terragen.

 

[Erin99]

I like the top one very much, Lioness. The reddish sky is amazing. And I love the effect in number two... like an ice rink almost.

Well done.

 

[TheUltimateChosenOne]

Maps are cool. I've working on an atlas for my science fiction, outer space series I've recently started writing.
I also use google sketchup to create models like for space ships, buildings, castles, volcanos and many other awesome models I can custom make.

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

Now that's some user name you have there TUCO. Nicely modest, I like it.

It has a fine finality to it.

 

[TheUltimateChosenOne]

Thanks! It has a certain uniqueness to it. It's also the name of my account on youtube!