Map Making The World: Part 3- Sorin

Creating this land was…something special. I experimented with some fun effects. I had to play around with Photoshop because I couldn’t find the map making tutorial I needed.

Last week, I introduced you to Sorin.

Now, it looks like this:

I like the map, but there’s something off about it. Don’t know what’s bothering me, yet.

Creating Sorin was particularly hard. I wanted it to be rugged. During my research, I found out mountains are generally located near the edge of continents. How do I make Sorin rugged without it being trapped in a wall of mountains? I Googled “Fantasy map mountain” to see how other maps handled areas with large mountain ranges. That helped a lot.

While examining other maps, I noticed some had an outer glow representing a shoreline.

Source: TV Tropes

I wanted to try it. Turns out, adding a shoreline is a lot harder than checking Outer Glow in Blending Options. I tried Goggling tutorials. I didn’t find much.

Realistic Mapmaking for Fantasy and Science Fiction Worlds

I’m still working on this. I like my shoreline. It could be better- more noticeable.

Creating a shoreline isn’t that important. The world map is going to be in black and white when I put it in my book. No one’s gonna see an Outer Glow. 

I also wanted to make the ocean look like water. Another thing I did just for fun. I’ll be removing the Ocean Layer when I put the map in Chains of the Sciell.

I should’ve mentioned this sooner. When I create book images, I start with a Transparent background, then add a Fill Layer. I never use a white or color background. I want the image background to be the book’s page.  

If you want to preserve Transparency when you Save for Web, change the file to GIF and select Transparency. 

Back to the ocean. Here’s what it looked like before:

After:

To create that effect, I used Filter-Render-Cloud. As far as I know, you can’t edit how the ocean is rendered. You have to keep rendering until you like the result. 

Cloud mixes the foreground and background colors. I’ve seen tutorials where you only use one color to make the ocean. I tried it. Didn’t like it. I wanted two colors. I had to experiment with different blues to create that effect.

I used 0f14ee- foreground and 1e5ef0-background. Don’t know if it makes a difference which blue is foreground and background. 

Here’s the new world map:

I’ve mentioned a couple of times that I start each landmass as a big blob. I started working on the next land, but I haven’t had the time to shape it. This is how my lands start.

Now, I’m going to play with this. Erase some parts. Add some part. Make the edges more realistic. Make it look like land.

Map Making The World: Part 1
Map Making The World: Part 2-Tsya