[WIP] Winter Solstice
Royal Scribe
🖼️ 250 images Mapmaker
I was going to hold off posting this until December, but I might use it to make Christmas cards, so decided I needed input sooner. (There may be other holiday maps coming, too -- a winter village celebrating yuletide, maybe even a Santa's Workshop?)
For this one, I designed a "Winter Solstice" scene using Spectrum Overland. I have attempted to do both daytime and nighttime versions. (This is the map I was seeking an image of the moon for.)
Here's the daytime version. I wanted to use the henge symbol (very solstice-y!) but at first paused because it's on a dirt background and there isn't a snowy version. Then I figured: maybe elven magic consecrates that area and protects it a bit from the weather, like Lothlórien and Rivendell. I added the tundra terrain below it, and the less snowy trees around it to show that the henge is a bit warmer than the rest. I love the ice fissure but maybe it's a little much? And I just noticed how large the hill between the mountains in the background and foreground are -- should I reduce those ones (or at least move them down a little)?
Anyway, I also tried to do a few nighttime variations. (For the night ones, I may change the border color to be black.)
Here's one with just stars, no moon. And it doesn't have lighting effects.
Here I've added a public domain image of the moon. Is it too realistic? Would the moon image in CA80 that Ricko recommended work better?
And here it is with nighttime lighting. (Since the symbols have built-in shadows, should I move the moon more to the left side?)
Comments
These are great! The only thing I see that might need changing is that the shadows in the nighttime version(s) seem to be going the wrong direction to have been cast by the moon.
Thank you! Yeah, I noticed that issue with the shadows, too. The shadows are built into the symbols, not an effect from the global sun, so I will move the moon over to the left side.
I think some of the mountains have been flipped, so some of them have shadows on the left, and some on the right. The moon will probably look a bit odd wherever you put it unless you flip the mountains so that the light sides are all on the same side.
Oh dear, you're right. I toggled the mirror setting with something to see how it looked, and I guess I forgot. I will flip those back.
You should find it a lot easier to see where the moon should go once you've done that.
I don't suppose there's a command to flip a symbol, is there? I saw the menu option for "Rotate Align" but couldn't find a clear explanation of it even in the Tome.
If you right click the Move tool there's a Mirror command. Pick that and then pick the mountian and Do It. Then place the mirror line with two click running vertically in the centre of the symbol using the snap grid. You might have to move it back into position a bit, but that would do the trick.
Otherwise, it might be faster to find that symbol in the catalogue and repaste it the right way around.
Thanks! I will try that later this afternoon when I have a chance to get back to it. I knew there was a mirrored copy command but I never noticed it under the Move command. But yeah, might be faster just to repaste the symbol. ;-)
Okay, I think it was just one mountain that was mirrored and needed to be switched so the shadows were consistent. I tried to look at all of the hills and trees, too -- please let me know if you spot any with aberrant shadows.