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Ye Olde Mappe Tutorial
Published: 2012-03-03 05:24:31 +0000 UTC; Views: 64173; Favourites: 4125; Downloads: 1645
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Description
The promised tutorial on how I make my maps! If you have any questions, just ask
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Comments: 570
Hehe, it's not too hard, just requires a lot of patience in my experience :b
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Ah I see...sounds like a good project for when I have vacation
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Haha, yeah, or you just want to try something totally different!
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A very helpful and well realized tutorial... thank you very much ! I directly faved
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Absolutely fantastic. The best tutorials show how the artist did the own art but allows the reader to make something unique to them still.
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Yeah, I imagine this would be best done if the person puts their own touches in it. It would suck if every old map looked alike! Similarly, I'm sure people want their maps to look like THEIR maps, not just copies of mine :b
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First let me say awesome looking maps.
I play pen and paper RPGs, mostly D&D, and I created a world years ago and I have a few thing for you to consider that would make your maps even better.
When you create a map you need to think globally as well as locally. Here is what I mean...
Where does the continent sit north to south on your globe? This effects what kind of climate and terrain you have.
What has been the global evolution? Did the land masses start out in a Pangea like earth or was the land aready seperated? This affects how many mountain ranges and what types you have. Has there been an Iceage or other global event (large meteor strike) that would change the overall planet? These effect land formations and water flow.
Then you have to think about what the weather patterns and global water flow are like. These effect coastal formations and terrain distribution.
just a few thoughts that would make your maps even better.
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"you need to think globally as well as locally"
"What has been the global evolution? Did the land masses start out in a Pangea like earth or was the land aready seperated? This affects how many mountain ranges and what types you have. Has there been an Iceage or other global event (large meteor strike)"
Yup, I consider these. All great ideas to mull over for anyone doing world-building. I personally try not to be too nitpicky about it, as I get extremely OCD and it saps the enjoyment out for me, but that's why I brought up geographical considerations in the tutorial - I figure some people would be suckers for making it as realistic as possible!
Appreciate the compliment and input, thanks!
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Wow, excellent tutorial!
I love tutorials about how to make old maps and I must say, this is one of the most complete I've ever seen. Thank you very much for sharing
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Wow, thank you very much! I've only seen one other map tutorial, personally, but I'll take your word for it 
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This is perfect! I've been working on a map of a fictional world and you have no idea how useful this is. I just tried the first steps of this, and actually found a way of making it look as if the map had fold marks as well. Thank you so much!
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Heh, great to hear! The fold marks can probably be done by either overlaying a photo/scan of actual folded/rumpled paper, or by drawing the folds in, applying an emboss filter, and then setting it to overlay. Is that how you did it? Or did you paint them from scratch?
Thanks for the feedback, and you're welcome! Glad to hear you're making cool progress of your own!
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I did it from scratch, using the...uh, this is hard to explain, since my version of PS is in Spanish, but is an option that I believe is called "Filters>Liquify>Pinch" and then just making the lines were the fold marks would be. After that I added a bit of shadow to mimic the 'slightly folded' look to make it a bit more realistic, and that's it. Probably not perfect, but I like the way it looks ^^
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Cool! And that's what matters, really
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Really interesting and useful, thank you
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A phenomenally useful resource; thank you so, so much
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Wow, thanks so much! 
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I love you so much, I wanna cry. Oh, I really hope I can make something great now. 
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Haha, aww! Thanks so much, and best of luck to you
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Great tutorial ! I'm planning to create a map for one of my friends's brithday, and this will help me a lot !
Congratz !
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Thank you
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fantastic tutorial !! well done ! congrats for the DD
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What a great tutorial!
I really love the fact that you went into such detail, even including fonts and suggestions for making up names. It's a complete tutorial for making a map, not just certain aspects of it such as only the background, or only the way you can use layer effects, etc. The maps in your own gallery look amazing, and it's wonderful that you're now sharing that knowledge on how to make those.
(Also, it immediately brought me back to my younger years when I had an obsession with creating maps, and spent entire days at my table messing around with tea and fineliners. Good memories!)
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Thank you so much
Yeah, there's a bit more to map-making, in my opinion, than just drawing the thing. It's getting it to look right, and it having a certain level of realism and plausibility. I wanted the tutorial to give people the basics of how to do things in Photoshop, but also give ideas on the creative/concept/geographical aspects as well
Again, thanks a lot for your comment <3 You should make more oldschool maps! I've never gotten around to it, but I imagine I'd get frustrated and make a mess XD
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No problem!
Yeah, you really hit the core of map-making here. I always find it very difficult to make my maps look realistic; they always turn out a little forced or too obvious in the way they look. So I'm off to practice with all the lovely tips in your tutorial, especially since you more than succeeded in also giving ideas on all the other aspects.
Oldschool maps can indeed get terribly frustrating xD It's always in good fun though, and sometimes messing around (especially with tea) can lead to some wonderfully realistic effects that I usually have some trouble with digitally (because of my lack of skills, they tend to come out a little too polished when done in PS, for example).
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Mmm, yeah. You get some neat "mistakes" while making oldschool maps sometimes, but I think I'm probably too OCD to handle it x_x No undo button!
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Awesome tutorial! Just for all the people asking, this should work in GIMP, although the only thing that might be a little tough is the glow
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Oh, good to know! Now I can tell GIMP users there's still hope :b As for the glow bit, that can be done manually by just painting over lines with an airbrush set to multiply or whatever the glow effect was going to be.
Thanks
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No problem
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Heh, oddly enough, I rarely use special or custom Photoshop brushes, even though I feel like they'd add a nice amount of texture to my work that's lacking right now. So they're one of the things I actually haven't really learned how to do - I'm sure I could, just never bothered looking into it, really :b
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That's not necessarily bad though, haha. So many people abuse them, I definitely used to until I started using SAI (which doesn't have the same system of brushes). They seem so cool until you realise they look...really weird xP
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