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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tovokas" data-source="post: 3326557" data-attributes="member: 7206">Great job everyone!I'm also really impressed by the quality of the maps that were created on a fairly quick time-table.As far as my map creating style is concerned... it's been a slowly evolving process (and a long boring tale, but hey, someone asked <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  Building maps has always been my favorite part of being a GM. In the days before home computers (if you don't count TRS-80's) I drew everything by hand in pen. I loved coasts, so that was the dominant feature in most maps. Eventually the names of things began to take precedence. Rather than trying to squeeze the names around the terrain features, I fit the features around the names. This required sketching the map in pencil, adding the names, finalizing the terrain features, then drawing over everything in pen and erasing the pencil lines. If I was feeling frisky I would then color the map with pencils. As the years went by I developed various styles for cities, forts, swamps, etc that I could reproduce by hand quickly. As I got older, met my beautiful wife, had kids – time became a much scarcer commodity, so I was thrilled when computers (and printers) reached a point where I could switch over.  After experimenting with various programs, I eventually I got the Corel Draw 4 suite which became my workhorse. All the original terrain/feature icons were created in Corel Draw, and eventually colored in PhotoPaint. I’d create the coasts and names in Draw, then bring everything in to PhotoPaint. I loved these maps, but the coasts and names took forever to create, which kind of defeated the purpose.After messing with various techniques, I finally discovered layer styles in Photoshop, which really simplified the process of creating coasts. Like HALL, I have a land layer over a water layer. The land layer has various styles applied to it, and I erase it to reveal the water below. The names are created in Photoshop using it’s built in text effects. (A real time saver) Having scores of individual icons as layers in PhotoShop doesn’t work so hot, so I eventually converted the terrain features and icons into bitmap shapes for Fractal Mapper. I create the basic map in PhotoShop, and then bring a copy in as a background in Fractal Mapper. There I can add the icons quickly and easily. I export just the terrain features from Fractal Mapper and bring them back into Photoshop. From this point on, I just style away. I copy feathered sections of the land and water layers to new layers and darken/lighten/color until everything looks cool. To create the ‘reefs’ around the coast I select the water shape, reduce it, then border it to get its shape. Finally, I render everything to one layer, and do some final hand edits to try to get away from the ‘computery-look’ JVisgaitis described. These edits can really make a difference – but they’re also not reproducible, so if I have to go in and make major changes to the map’s underlying features, I’d need to do the finalizing process over.  No big deal, it just depends on how tight I am with time.Thanks for having the contest – it’s been fun building the map. If anyone has any questions feel free to ask!Tovokas</blockquote>

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