I decided to create a new world for my upcoming AD&D campaign. Not sure of much, yet. I doodled out a map outline and decided to see what I would do with the thing. 
It turned out kind of strange, but, I scanned it and loaded it into Gimp. If you haven’t tried your hand at digital mapmaking and are interested in doing so, graphic editing programs are an excellent way to go. You can spend several hundred dollars on Adobe Photoshop, or, download Gimp - Gnu Image Manipulation Program. It’s free and awesome. You might also want to check out The Cartographer's Guild, a forum for fantasy cartography enthusiasts. The people are friendly, helpful and there are several tutorials to get you started. Some of the Guild mapmakers produce work that puts to shame a lot of what you see in professionally done RPG supplements (like the butt-ugly Forgotten Realms 3.0 map.) This is only my second map using Gimp, but, I’ve already learned quite a bit and I’m looking forward to tackling a city map in the near future.
Here’s a low res copy of what I’ve gotten done so far:
I need to play with the water layer a bit more. It’s a little too busy.
Other than that, I’ve added a few more links. Speaking of which, other than the excellent Candlekeep and the Forgotten Realms Wiki, I can’t find any decent Forgotten Realms sites. If you know of any quality FR links, let me know.
Speaking of sites worth visiting, if you haven’t checked out Planet Algol, you’re missing a treat!
You can have "busy" water in a map, but you've got to consider a couple of things:
ReplyDelete- It can't be more contrasted than the continents because then it steals your attention from the supposed focus of attention (what i'm saying is that the darkest green on your continent is not as dark as the darkest blue on the ocean, and at the same time, the lightest green is not as light as the lightest blue, that is almost white in your map, if you reverse that relation, it will look better, the continents will pop up)
- You can have busy water, but it needs to be busy in relation to the continents; make the ocean more detailed towards the coastlines to emphasize them, and less detailed in deep waters.
Another point to be made, is that your map is oddly composed, because it has too much empty room to the right and left sides, but it looks constrained on the top and bottom, try to make those spaces equal (that is: give the top and bottom a little more wiggle room, and make the left and right spaces smaller)
Hope it helps!
You could also try to colour your maps by hand first, then use filters and layers to obtain a "not so hand made not so cgish" look.
ReplyDeleteI do that all the time and it works pretty nicely:
http://odd74.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=workshop&action=display&thread=2842
Thanks, Felipe!
ReplyDelete