The Velesova Isles

LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
Here's just a quick map I made this evening with the January issue of the 2017 annual - the Black and White Fantasy style by Par Lindstrom (and I've no idea where to find all the special characters for that rather special name)

I scaled the trees down a bit compared to everything else, and I adjusted a couple of the effects around the coast, but apart from that its all 'as-is' in the annual :)

[Image_11007]

Comments

  • ScottAScottA Surveyor
    There's just something about the crispness and neatness of a black and white map...
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    Its a really lovely style. Everything works together really well :)
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    edited May 2018
    Thank you, Lorelei :)

    It's a really easy style to work with ;)
  • Josh.P.Josh.P. Traveler
    Love it. Shame the waves don't come in a fill instead of the symbols.
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    Thanks Josh :)

    Those waves are a fill ;)
  • This is a beautiful map Sue! Is it part of the world in your book?
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    Thanks Tony :)

    No - Velesova is just a place I dreamed up last night while I was playing with the style.

    This is a remarkably fast style to work with. If I had done this in HW (my favourite style of all time, and the one that caught my eye and caused me to buy CC3 in the first place) it might not have gone as quickly. Maybe that's because its a black and white style and I don't get to spend hours and hours messing around getting 'just that particular shade' for each sheet. (I have an addiction to the rather heavy use of HSL sheet effects!)
  • Yeah, and it has done wonders for your maps so I hope you never stop using them! I don't want to derail your thread but I would like to ask you a question about HSL sheet effects. When putting in the values, are there limits to how far positive or negative you can make those values be before they stop working? With your schooling it art I figured your instructors might have told you about any limits. Basically I am being lazy and asking instead of spending time trying to google it. Hope you don't mind. :P
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    Tony - you can derail me any time :)

    I think one of the Team might be able to give you a definitive answer to that question, but I've used numbers as high as 150, and the only reason I've stopped there in the case of the Hue value is because eventually you end up going right around the colour circle back to where you started. I still don't know whether that would be 255, 300, or some other number. I usually get the Hue I want before I get that far, though ;)

    As for Lightness, that one is self controlling, since if you go too far either way it just turns everything black or white.

    Saturation I still have a bit of trouble getting my head around, since in my personal reality increasing the saturation (ie using a positive number in that box) should make the colour brighter. But it has the opposite effect in the CC3+. If you want your colours to be more vivid, you need to enter a negative number. That ALWAYS gets me - every time! LOL!
  • Cool! Thanks Sue, that definitely helps :)
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    You're welcome :)

    I click apply and judge by eye.

    The only thing to be really careful with is sending everything too dark or too light. There's plenty of leeway with most of the fills, but if you end up with lots of pixels that are pure white or pure black as a result of the HSL effect, it can cause a lot of transparency acne when used in combination with bevel and edge fade inner effects.

    The only way to know for sure is play around with it.

    If, however, you really want to send something to nearly black, or nearly white, and still use a bevel or edge fade inner, you can use an RGB Matrix instead.

    They take a LOT more thinking to operate, but I've used them in Sanctuary to unify the basic colours of all the stone objects (walls, roads, cliffs), and simultaneously done away with a transparency acne problem I was getting on the cliffs when using an HSL effect to try and achieve the same colour.
  • That's good to know, thank you. I've been trying to recreate that green color John Stevenson always seems to use in his maps but I can't quite get it in CC3+ yet. It's kind of a washed out green that he seems to add highlights and shading to that creates great looking hills when he's done. The best example of it that I can think of is the map of Haralsea that he made.
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    A good trick to use when trying to match a particular colour you like is to import a cropped sample of the actual image it comes from and paste it on a sheet of its own above the one you are working on. Then each time you adjust the sheet effect and click apply you can see if you are getting closer or further away.

    If I'm matching a particular colour I will adjust the hue first, then the lightness, and finally the saturation.

    The hardest colours to do this with (unfortunately) are greens, since green reacts very strangely to how much grey it contains (saturation). Instead of just becoming less brilliant it seems to shift towards blue if you add more grey, and towards yellow if you increase the strength of the colour (all using the saturation control).

    It may take some time to achieve, and you may have to go back and adjust the hue and lightness again when the saturation causes it to shift either yellow or blue, but you'll get there ;)
  • Hmm, I didn't know green did that. Thanks again Sue. I'll have to see what I can do to get a swatch of that color imported.
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    Its not just in CC3. These are universal qualities. I sometimes think that colour theory is missing something, even though its a very large study area.

    A lot of it may be down to the way our human brains have evolved to interpret the light we see, or in the way that colours are depicted by computer screens, but there are times when yellow is green (when you add black), and green is yellow (when you add white and increase the intensity of the colour). Its all a bit mind bending - even for me!
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    Just for a bit of fun I did a Herwin Wielink version as well.

    Not sure I like this one as much as the first.
  • ScottAScottA Surveyor
    As much as I love HW style, I prefer the black and white one.
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    Maybe its because there isn't really a border to break around this one, but I'm afraid I have to agree with you. The black and white one is the one for me too.

    I just had to try it in my favourite style - just so I knew.

    The first version also has the added advantage that the map was designed for that style ;)
  • very nicely done Sue! I love them both!!!

    My only nitpick.. on the Weilink map, your dark strip inside border goes in front of your highest mountain... darkening it as well. I think it would look much better, if the mountain was in front of the border.
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    edited May 2018
    Thanks Storm :)

    That's actually a really good example of an optical illusion - since I can't stop seeing it now you've told me its in front.

    But it isn't really.

    Look - here is an enlargement.

    [Image_11009]

    Damn! That's actually such a good illusion that I can STILL see the strip in front of the mountain! LOL! But its not :P


    To put that right I would have to increase the contrast between the strip and the mountain by making it either a bit darker than it is, or a bit lighter than it is. Its the same problem that you get with text when the text colour isn't sufficiently separated from the background by a decent contrasting glow.
  • you're right... it's not... but I swear it looks like it is on the map! I guess the texture on the mountain lines up practically perfectly with that border! What are the odds of that?
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    Well - you should know me by now.

    If there's a peculiar thing that can happen, it happens :P
  • I really like the Lindstrom Black and White: a map I did in it a while back came out quite nicely. I only wish it had a few more symbols.
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    Thank you, Barliman :)

    That's the charm of the annuals - just a small style. I quite often find them easier to work with than styles with a million fills and symbols.
Sign In or Register to comment.