Playing With Parchment

[Ashy]

Great job (as usual), Hound! Keep up the great work.

 

[HellHound]

Thanks and (though it need not be said) please keep us posted when this goes commercial --this is something I'd love to throw cashish at.

-D

Well, the individual parchments I have no -current- intention to release as a product of their own, I'm intending to use them as backgrounds for our other commerical d20 releases

 

[carpedavid]

I love those sidebars. Very, very nice.

 

[Kris]

Just repeating what everyone else has already said - Very cool looking parchments!

I had been messing around in photoshop a while back trying to do this kind of thing - though without much luck

Anyway I just tried your quick tutorial above - and I love the results.

So I just wanna say thanks for sharing your secret - Cheers!

Now I'm off to make another map

 

[Fargoth]

Very nice work HellHound!

I've fiddled with my own parchments. Here are three samples. I am sure my method is far different then yours. I use the old-fashioned ageing method on real paper and then scan the suckers into PSP to refine the base image.

These are unmodified samples. They produce some nice post-production images. Original files are of various sizes the smallest of which is easily 5MB.

http://www.truenorthcartography.com/gallery/parch1.jpg
http://www.truenorthcartography.com/gallery/parch2.jpg
http://www.truenorthcartography.com/gallery/parch3.jpg

Regards,
Paul

 

[HellHound]

Very nice, Paul.

I would reallylike permission to use your textures in the building of new parchments in my style.

 

[Fargoth]

Very nice, Paul.

I would reallylike permission to use your textures in the building of new parchments in my style.

Be my guest HH. Permission granted. I just ask for similar permission to use anything you create from them.

Aren't the JPGs a tad small for you for full-page images? That is of course assuming that's what you intend to create. If you want larger versions let me know and I can email you a few links to the file locations.

Regards,
Paul

 

[HellHound]

Well, with the inspiration provided by Fargoth, combined with the fact that my wife was too ill to game yesterday, the gelflings (my daughters) and I decided to try a craft, and we aged paper int he classic tea-bag style.

Of the four sheets we did, two came out very well, and two less so.

But from them, I started making new parchment designs, and here is the first:

 

[HellHound]

Ths sidebar uses about a quarter of the sheet that my youngest daughter did with the teabag method.

She's all excited that she gets to have her work published again, even as background graphics.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Something's been bugging me about the edging on some of your parchments - like the celtic rope design on this last one - and I think I've finally put my finger on it.

I think the edging design needs to look as if it has been affected by the aging and tearing of the paper. Perhaps a little burn around the lettering itself, as the (presumed) chemicals in the (supposed) ink would react to aging slighltly differently than the paper itself. Also, perhaps a tiny bit of distortion at the places where the design hits the edge of the paper to give it a little more three dimensional feel. Perhaps the design just seems a little too "photoshop perfect" and could use some noise/speckling/etc. to amke it seem a little distressed...

On the earlier ones, I didn't like the edges of the paper so much, but on these last two, they look really good. There's just that one little thing, and I'm not sure I'm really putting my finger on it.