Inqtala Lake WIP
LadieStorm
🖼️ 50 images Surveyor
Cartographer's Guild has a lite mapping challenge that I decided to give a shot. This month the lite mapping challenge is to map out a campsite. I thought this would be an excellent way to show the adaptation of Shessar's wonderful streams, so I'm setting up a campsite beside a lake. I think this a cool opportunity, because I can continue to make maps for Larysia this way. This may end up being a battle map... or the map for one of my lakes in any of my continents for Larysia.
Obviously, I've just started, and I'm trying something a little different. A lake is a little different than a stream, since you aren't going to have as much in the way of rocks and stuff poking through (although I did add a jumping trout!)
Anyway, I thought you all might like to see what I'm doing this time.... this one will be much more simpler than Ardenvale.
Obviously, I've just started, and I'm trying something a little different. A lake is a little different than a stream, since you aren't going to have as much in the way of rocks and stuff poking through (although I did add a jumping trout!)
Anyway, I thought you all might like to see what I'm doing this time.... this one will be much more simpler than Ardenvale.
Comments
You know how everyone is always going on about how rivers don't split before they reach the bay/sea/ocean?...
Well...I happen to live in an area where they do exactly that. The Skagit river splits before it goes into the bay.
I think the Skagit river is crazy because it has many tributaries that join up with the river before it leaves the mountains, but before it comes to the bay it splits into two separate rivers and then finally gets to the bay and forms two different delta's...How weird is that!
I'll upload a map. Look at the blue line in the map that leads to Skagit Bay. You can see the split.
And I only live about 4 miles away from the river. but about 14 away from Skagit Bay.
Lol, you must not like the river police very much..haha..I think of it more like a big joke. They are just people trying to make sure that unless there is a reason for it, most rivers should act just like they are trying to say...but....in my case, I live in wonderland...where rivers do what they want. where you can travel for 15 minutes and reach the bay, and turn around and see the mountains. And if you decide to go to said mountains, well, you just need to drive 15 minutes in the other direction! And I'm not talking foothills here either...these are mountains with lots of snow on them!
This is a view from the bay. It will show you how far away from the mountains I am. And yes, it really does look like that around here. It is easy to imagine Dwarves in the mountains and Orcs and Goblins too. And Elves in the forests below...great stuff for mapping!
And who wants a completely realistic world anyway? We LIVE in one of those...and we play these fantasy based games for one reason (no matter what we tell ourselves), to ESCAPE REALITY for while.
So why, then, draw realism into it in the first place?
The reason why things like water flowing downhill, mountains occurring in chains, and oceans not floating in the sky are important to most mapping is familiarity. It's this familiarity that allows for suspension of disbelief, as Monsen points out.
A lot of storytellers have said that one of the best ways to instill a sense of wonder is to change just one element and then follow the effects of that change. For example, if it's possible to violate the square/cube relationship of the real world, then things like giants, minis, and flying creatures become possible. (The square cube relationship for items observes that the strength of materials goes up as the second power of the length, while weight goes up as the third power of length, meaning that items get heavier much faster than they get strong enough to hold up the extra weight). If that relationship is held, then flying things will be very weak, large things will be more ponderous as they get larger, and small things won't be particularly intelligent.
Anyway, sorry for the thread hijack.
I finished two years of college, before I dropped out do to failing grades(I was sick a lot my sophomore year) and financial constraints. But I'm an avid reader, and then I have a lot of interests where I start asking questions, like I've done in some of these threads... and I retain the knowledge somewhere in my brain, until I need it.
Click that options button and set the two I mentioned above. See if that gets rid of that huge white border around your map.
A game company called Games Workshop is famous for doing things like that and they make professional quality maps and illustrations.
So the pixellation is on the port side bow!..lol
And I think this map turned out really nicely, but there is no way it can compete with that animated map. Did you see that?
Unfortunately, some of the art in the CSUAC does not do well when enlarged too much. Not much can be done except to make them smaller and pile them up more.