My "Edge of Creation" map
Tonnichiwa
🖼️ 16 images Surveyor
Hello everyone,
Today I thought I would make another map in a sort of Asian style, only this time mix it up a bit with the Annual #103, the Panorama view of a city. There is no reason for this map other than I was bored and wanted to try something. Comments and critiques welcome
Today I thought I would make another map in a sort of Asian style, only this time mix it up a bit with the Annual #103, the Panorama view of a city. There is no reason for this map other than I was bored and wanted to try something. Comments and critiques welcome
Comments
Up to now, I've only found 3, I clearly lack some training!
Otherwise, I'd like to make some comments on this map. First, I would never have thought those two styles would merge so well. There is a small discrepancy in sharpness/fuzziness, but it's quite acceptable IMO.
However, the way the sky is drawn makes it really difficult to read the text at the top left (not that I would be able to read any of it anyway, but I think even a native Chinese speaker would be in great trouble...). And you have two villages with the same name at the right. Is this on purpose?
You truly are the master of the Empire of the Sun style!
The only critique I have is the water color loses so much of the other details.
Ukiyo-e is very colorful so don't worry about having to many colors. ( I prefer Japanese so I am pretending it is that instead of Chinese. I know nothing of Chinese)
I would try a version where you add white to the wisps of cloud.
Also try lose the lines from the back of the text (Hiragana characters) The script itself is beautiful but gets lost.
One additional detail that could give it that extra punch is add some white to one of the hills. Almost all the pictures I have seen have representation of snow on mountains or hills.
These are just my opinions and don't mean to take away anything from the great job you have done!
@Lorelei: Thank you, I'm sure you will do great at making these kind of maps as you get into it. The style can be hard at times but once you get used to it the task becomes much easier. The style always looks better with the sheets and effects turned on though and looks terrible without them.
@Cobra Mustang: Thank you, and just so you know, it IS Japanese, not Chinese. Normally I use quite a bit of color on my Asian maps but this time around I wanted to limit the colors as the map is supposed to be sort of faded out and some of the color gone. I've got 120 different Ukiyo-E prints from about 20 different artists and most from Hokusai have snow in them but there are a few that do not. This is supposed to represent one of the little known ones without snow. But thank you for the suggestions
One thing you could do language wise if you want something that is Chinese and Japanese in flavor is to use the Togo language. I think that is what it was called it is the common trade language in the old Kara-Tur setting and is a combination of Chinese and Japanese. On of the old Polyheahdron magazine had an article on it along with a small dictionary of words.
I have wanted to use that language in my artwork since I started, but because I am willing to sell my maps if there is a buyer Wizards of the Coast will not allow me to use that font in my work
But you are right, it is the most ideal pseudo Asian font I've seen that can be read by English readers. I suppose if I make some maps for the sole purpose of just having people look at them and never for sale then I could probably use it, though I would still be wary of infringing their copyright.
The guy who wrote the article wanted to create what the common tongue would be in Kara-Tur and created the trade language. It never had an "official" name too as I recall.
Really wish I still had the article as he spent a good bit of it explain how words are created in Japanese and Chinese and had a dictionary.
Now if your looking for a good tool to help with doing Japanese language get JiShop. It has free version. I have the fullll version and it is a huge help.
http://www.jishop.com/
With the languages for the Forgotten Realms, since there is no actual font, there are pics of the letters in the sets I have on PDF from the rpgNOW company. I suppose if I wanted to I could make maps using that font by loading the pics into Gimp, making PNG's out of them, and using them that way, then selling the maps on the Dungeonmaster's Guild, all legal if I do it that way.
A few other little language things you may find helpful for other asian themed projects.
Mystical writing has its own script. When i was doing research into onmyodo stuff. Some images of ancient mystical Japanese writing used an archaic style script from what I could find and we only have fragments of the writing and it isn't clear. So make your own variation or secret one for ocuult stuff.
Modern onmyodo depictions and most of the stuff you'll find about it is not going to be accurate and is the result of 20th century depictions of it. (2 in particular)
RPGNow.com has a font you can get called Wizard Kanji that works well for doing faux oriental mystical stuff.
A lot of aux oriental writing fonts and ones that can give English and oriental character can look bad when you go to print. (Learned that one a few yeras back, when working on a program book for a convention.)
Dover has some good clip art books if your looking for Japanese & Chinese art to turn into symbols.
Translating Japanese and Chinese is a major pain, as some things are not going to translate well at all.
I did a blog post on translation issues awhile back if you want to know of some of the problems that can frequent things I observed when working on translating a Japanese game into English.
http://forums.rpgmakerweb.com/index.php?/blogs/entry/562-translation-fun-with-the-samurai-sample-game/
In case you read the blog post one thing that I didn't spell out is that onimusha could be a warrior demon (A demon soldier) or a a warrior that fights demons. (In the game in the blog post it is a type of demon.)
https://www.kirith.com/tsr-fonts/
Some of the old Forgotten Realms fonts that were included with the FR Interactive Atlas, and that you can also download online, also don't work on Vista and up due to changes Microsoft made in how font metadata is handled. The Atlas also has problem installing the fonts too on Vista and up so the work. (I covered this in other forum posts on font problems to be aware of in great detail.)
@ Cobra Mustang: I hope you at least kept all that stuff. It would be a shame to lose it all.
I've helped do troubleshooting on the FR Atlas problems in the forum before.
One other site I can't find again had a lot of good free Asian language fonts.
Now if you want info on onmyodo or some of the stuff I mentioned in my earlier post, that had the blog link let me know.
I'm in in a very oriental adventures mood today since TCM is showing Onibaba & Ugetsu latter tonight.
Good deal cobra mustang. I'm the same. I have tons of stuff from 1st edition ad&d, the gazetteer series of d&d, and the core rulebooks plus a lot of the supplemental books from every edition of the game and even some for pathfinder.