Loopysue
Loopysue
About
- Username
- Loopysue
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- Member, ProFantasy
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- June 29, 1966
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- Dorset, England, UK
- Real Name
- Sue Daniel (aka 'Mouse')
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Creating a Template to simulate the Khorvaire Map
The reversal of land and sea only happened because I wanted to be able to use very soft wide blends between colours on the land without having to obey the coastline.
It's actually the way water is usually done in a city map, so think of it as being an extremly large planetary city map.
EDIT: and if you get stuck at all just shout again. Things might not be as simple as I've described, or work the way I imagine they will, but we will get there in the end.
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Creating a Template to simulate the Khorvaire Map
Ok, that's good to know :)
For the landmass and ocean I recommend Darklands Overland style from the 2021 annual. Read the mapping guide for that one carefully since the sea goes on top of the land. That will give you a parchment land mass and will allow the different colours blended onto the land to extend right up to the coast despite being broadly blurred to give that soft colouration effect. there are set colours for the drawing tools, but you can clone and modify the drawing tools if you want different colours.
Once the land is put down and all the colours sorted out I think your ideas for the symbols are pretty good as it goes, though you might find it a little tricky matching them on a comparatively dark background like Darklands Overland. If that happens use the Mike Schley inks style and add a Blend Mode sheet effect to the symbols sheets set to Multiply to get rid of the white parts.
As for the structure symbols Remy has already explained those.
That leaves just the escarpment symbols. The closest I can think to that style is possibly the escarpments from the new E Prybylski Watercolor style in this year's annual, but they might not match that well.
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Creating a Template to simulate the Khorvaire Map
How close a match to that original map are you hoping to get?
The reason for asking is I can make a few suggestions but none of the styles will exactly match that example. I don't want to go recommending a combination of lots of different styles from different annuals (which could get a bit expensive if you don't already own them), only to realise that it might have been ok to go with something less ambitious and a bit cheaper to do.
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Battle at the Party
The connecting hedges should work ok just drawing them by stright line sections around a curve as long as the radius of that curve isn't too small. I think (but can't remember, and I'm only up for a brief moment right now in the middle of the night) that I might have shown them in an example map of a circular maze.
If you have the 2018 Cartographer's Annual I did a very small collection of varicolour flowering shrubs and fruit bushes for Asian Towns, though there aren't very many and they aren't my best so far, so I wouldn't buy the annual just for them if you haven't already got it.
Another place to look for things like this might be some of the other free collections from Vintyri, though I don't know what they contain these days in any great detail. https://forum.profantasy.com/discussion/10443/free-symbols-artwork
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WIP: An encounter site
Looks great as it is, Ede :)
Hieght is always a tricky one unless you employ a careful use of shadow effects, or even draw your own shadows on a separate sheet.
A shadow sheet above the cliffs and below the trees might be best for that second option - polygons of solid black drawn to cover the shaded sides of the canyon with a blend mode effect on that sheet set to multiply and about 20% opacity and then a blur effect to soften the edges quite significantly. That's a little more tricky than just using a few shadow sheet effects on the boulders, but probably more realistic as some of the shadow will fall on the boulders rather than coming from underneath them, and I think some of the shade will be cast by steep banks rather than the boulders.



