Royal Scribe
Royal Scribe
About
- Username
- Royal Scribe
- Joined
- Visits
- 4,318
- Last Active
- Roles
- Member
- Points
- 1,563
- Birthday
- February 5, 1968
- Location
- San Francisco, California
- Real Name
- Kevin
- Rank
- Mapmaker
- Badges
- 11
Reactions
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Castle in a Cloud
I made a few tweaks per Jim's suggestion. I added some misty cloud coverage above the castle, and also added some cloud wisps above the mountains and on the right side. I also added a few more smaller birds meant to look like they were flying lower.
I also discovered that Mike Schley's Overland style already has cloud symbols, but I wasn't sure how they'd work semi-transparent. I added them as a base to the castle but most of the clouds are still from Forest Trails.
Also made a few other tweaks, like adding hills to separate the grasslands from the default terrain, and a few more trees below the castle peeking through the clouds.
I looked through my symbols to see if there were any other flying creatures, but couldn't find anything. Mike Schley's lovely dragons were sleeping, not flying. I even checked WikiMedia Commons to see if there was a flying pegasus or dragon in public domain that would be suitable, but didn't find anything. If anyone has any other recommendations for other flying symbols, please let me know.
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Castle in a Cloud
I'm still practicing and experimenting with different maps of all sorts. Just for fun, I thought I would take a stab at designing a castle on a cloud. (Maybe it's a cloud giant's castle? Undecided.)
I started with an overland map set at 250 x 200, I believe. (Maybe I will do a city map of it later for a closer look, or perhaps a dungeon map.) I decided to use Mike Schley's Overland style. To create the clouds, I used various foams, rapids, and waterfall mist from Sue's Forest Trail set. It's hard to see until you move in, but there's a little bit of texture to the cloud added by the foaming rapids. I put them on a new sheet that I called "Clouds," placing it below the Roads sheet, which was the lowest of all of the surface-level sheets. I tried to put a drop shadow on the Clouds sheet but couldn't get it to work (entirely possible that some or all of my cloud ended up on the wrong sheet). Instead, I drew inspiration from the manual cliffs shadows that Sue had in Forest Trails. I used the Sea Contours to draw a shadow, and then moved the "Contours (Sea)" sheet to render before the cloud.
The castle, with its extra towers, was added to a "Symbols on Cloud" sheet that I created. I also had a Flying Lowest and Flying Low sheet above the Cloud sheet, and Flying and Flying Highest sheets below it. I thought the four different flying sheets would allow me to show things at different altitudes with different drop shadows, but I ended up only using one of them for the birds (maybe Giant Eagles or Giant Hawks?), which from the cartouches from Forest Trails.
Anyway, there's my first pass at something I haven't see here before.