Tir Na Nog Map (Slaine RPG) - First attempt with CC3
Hi all,
My first try with CC3 is a map of Tir Na Nog, from the world of Slaine RPG. It is based roughly on northwestern Europe with a lower water level but I took many liberties with the terrain. I'm particularly interested in how the mountains/hills look as those are the aspects that don't grab me. I used all stock CC3 components and symbols and went heavy on the Celtic fonts to see which ones I liked best. Thanks in advance for feedback.
My first try with CC3 is a map of Tir Na Nog, from the world of Slaine RPG. It is based roughly on northwestern Europe with a lower water level but I took many liberties with the terrain. I'm particularly interested in how the mountains/hills look as those are the aspects that don't grab me. I used all stock CC3 components and symbols and went heavy on the Celtic fonts to see which ones I liked best. Thanks in advance for feedback.
Comments
I don't have the fonts you are using installed though, which means I am missing out on some of the effect you are trying to accomplish. The text labels on the villages/cities also appear very small, but this might just be the font issue again, as some fonts are larger than others even at the same point size.
You may wish to post an exported image of your map in addition to the .fcw file so people can see how it is supposed to look. (You can just edit your post above and add an image to it if you wish)
What are those straight white solid and dashed lines going between the cities supposed to symbolize? They kind of ruin the look of the map IMHO.
Personally, I would probably up the symbol scale a little bit. All the map elements look quite small. You usually don't want to have to zoom in to a map to see a symbol properly.
The yellow text is quite small so I can zoom in to regional areas when I GM. But you're right, when you view the entire map a lot of elements are too small, and that is largely by design. It's meant to be zoomed in on. I am attaching a smaller region of the map as a jpg.
I have a few suggestions to try:
1) Increase the size of the mountains. I personally like the look of mountains that are larger than the trees when doing mid-scale maps like this. To me, it gives a more 'realistic' feel.
2) The brown walled city symbols look too vivid for me against the more muted other colors. You might move them to their own sheet and make them slightly transparent to see if you like it. The trees might be another candidate for the same treatment.
3) Try the ley lines in a color and effect that is less typical -- a purple line with orange glow, all on a sheet with transparency -- might make them look less like poor attempts at straight roads. Your challenge will be to make them look exotic without being eyesores.
Really nice job. I'm working on some of my continent maps, and looking for ideas. I'm definitely taking points from your map.
Steve
1. scaled up mountains. I also played with the Ctrl key while adding symbols to give a variety of sizes.
2. re-colored and increased transparency of ley lines. I used Steve's suggestion of purple w/ orange glow and it combines into a tannish hue that looks like a standard road, which is ok for now.
3. added transparency to the symbols sheet to tone down the bright colors. I'm sure there is another, better way to accomplish this but I'm not familiar with all the effects yet. From now on I think I'll use the varicolor symbols where available so they will fit in with the color scheme from the start. I will also add more sheets on future drawings to more finely split up the different elements.
Good learning experience so far.
To throw in a dissenting voice, I actually prefer the very first version of the map. The larger yellow text in the later ones makes the map a bit too crowded IMO. I'd leave the smaller version for regional views and for exports of the whole map, I'd simply hide that text.
The only thing a little bit jarring is the orange outline of the coast for me. Have you tried changing that to a more "sandy" color, e.g. Color 29.
Also, I turned off the orange land border; I agree with Ralf, it didn't look right, although at first the color I used did look like sand
Here is the overall map with the city labels turned off. I intended to also post a zoomed in version but the one thing I dislike about CC3 is the painfully slow redraw rate, so I gave up.
I would like add specific landmarks that Slaine has visited like the Zodiac Temple marked out on the ground, the Cern Abbas Giant of Dorset, CLontarf, COlchestor, St Albans, and Worm's Head, not far from Crumlyn village.
Anyway that damn good one and keep up the good work.