On Ralf's 2025 Ancient Realms Revisited tutorial this morning, there was discussion about using the Color Key rivers tool (where a magenta river is placed on the LAND sheet, cutting through the land to reveal the sea below). It was mentioned that the terrain sheets have to go over the land, and that means that you have to draw terrain around the rivers or using the regular rivers fill instead of the cutout.

I tried to do an experiment. On the left, I drew blue rivers over a swampy terrain. Not bad, but you do have to connect it properly to the coast for it to look right. But then on the right, I tried a different approach. I used the Color Key Cutout rivers on the land. Then I drew a swamp over it. Then I added the COLOR KEY effect to the LAND FEATURES (SWAMP) sheet (moving it to be the first effect), and then copied my magenta rivers to that sheet as well.

Both work well but I really like how the river pops in the swamp on the right. Quenten's CC4 wishlist idea in the chat of allowing color cutouts to cut through multiple sheets is a great idea, but in the meantime, copying the cutout to multiple sheets seems to work well.

Sue, as an aside, I really appreciate these style development threads. The first annual I bought in advance was 2024’s. Being a new user at the time, I had planned to wait a few months to see what came out and possibly spend my money instead on stocking up on older annuals. The Sinister Sewers development thread got me invested in it and I subscribed to the annual in December 2023 before anything was released. I imagine these threads are useful for your creative process but as a bonus: they’re good marketing, too!

(I also stocked up on older annuals over the year and now I think there are only three more to get.)

I’ve come a long way in a year, but terms like alpha threshold (possibly multiplied by distance from edge) and CONTOURSM remind me how much more I have to learn with CC3+. 🤣

I've never used this style before but now I'm intrigued. I'm in the midst of castle building at the moment but might try this out when I need a pause from the castle.

I love complimentary styles that allow for a consistent "vibe" at the continental, regional/local area, and city levels.

(I have heard of Joe v. the Volcano but it came out my senior year of college when I didn't have much time to go to movies, and I never got around to seeing it.)