# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Regional/World Mapping >  Old Empire of Lorn - Fantasy world map

## - Max -

Hi,

I'm planning to work on a bigger project than usual : mapping the world of the Old Empire of Lorn. Actual size is 7441x7016 px (63x60 cm) and I'll probably split it in 6 A4 maps. First step: the lands (light grey on map, white is sea) -map sample is 4000x3772 px-

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## - Max -

Some update : I added bases textures, some portolan lines and made engraved-like coastlines waves... I'm still wondering how I'll work on this map, the .psd file is already so big  :Question:

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## - Max -

Border frame added.

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## - Max -

Working on some brushes now. I've decided to use some Blaueu Moutains from his great atlas of Scotland. Here what I've done so far (I still need to do some individuals moutains though). I also did some trees and a few scribbles for the terrain. Jpgs are half the actual size.

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## Diamond

Great work so far!  I think you're quickly becoming one of my favorite artists here.

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## - Max -

Thanks much Diamond  :Smile:  And a few more mountains brushes from Blaeu's Atlas:

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## Vellum

Thanks for the mountains Max, I'm going to have to look up blaeu's atlas for sure!!  Really nice work on this, now tell me how to make a border like that?  LOL  I'm eagerly awaiting a new update MUHAHA
congrats

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## - Max -

Thanks much Vellum. Taking a look at old cartographers work is only a pleasure and Blaeu is one my favourites. For the border, I sketched the whole thing fast then used some old coastlines brushes I made long time ago to build the land mass. You can easily draw this kind of border with a pen but due to the big size of the map I wanted a more comfortable way to do it. Next update coming soon today (nothing that much, some compass, a little change in bases textures colors) and still working on a few brushes. Then I'll test them.

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## - Max -

A quick test of some brushes. I think I can do something interesting with it...

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## vorropohaiah

nice-looking mountains  :Smile:

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## Eilathen

> Great work so far!  I think you're quickly becoming one of my favorite artists here.


Wow, high praise indeed.

I have to agree. You are doing some excellent work here, Max. Very nice mountains. Have some rep.! And thanks for sharing!

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## - Max -

Thanks a lot vorropohaiah and Eilathen  :Smile:  So, new update: Changed colors of base textures and switch to lighter ones (guess it will make labeling easier), added compass and some subtle waves in sea and worked a bit on the coastlines.

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## - Max -

Some WIp work on western region (moutains and forests). here's what I've done so far:



Opacity of trees may be increased and I'll redo the three mounts in the forest in the west.

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## Wingshaw

Hi Max, this is looking pretty good. I really like the mountains, and the door in the big mountain nicely fits the style. 

I hope I'm right in assuming that you are inviting comments by posting here. If you don't mind me saying, I think the forests look a bit strange. Perhaps if the density of trees changed, so some areas look thicker and others more sparse, and/or if the trees overlapped one another more often. The other comment I have - and you may already be planning to do this yourself - perhaps hide an area of the border where it overlaps the mountains, so it looks like the map is spilling out of the frame.

Otherwise, looking really good - I particularly like the woodcut effect on your coastal waves and the crosshatch near the coasts. Are they done in PS?

THW.

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## amberroberts09

Mountain and the forest are the special things for me.

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## - Max -

> I hope I'm right in assuming that you are inviting comments by posting here. If you don't mind me saying, I think the forests look a bit strange. Perhaps if the density of trees changed, so some areas look thicker and others more sparse, and/or if the trees overlapped one another more often. The other comment I have - and you may already be planning to do this yourself - perhaps hide an area of the border where it overlaps the mountains, so it looks like the map is spilling out of the frame.
> 
> Otherwise, looking really good - I particularly like the woodcut effect on your coastal waves and the crosshatch near the coasts. Are they done in PS?
> 
> THW.


Comments are welcomed THW  :Smile: 

What I had in mind for the forests was to choose a non overlapped style that would fit better with Blaeu's mountain's style (like I did on Provinces of Selen map) but maybe it doesn't work that good due to big areas, I don't know. I'm gonna try to increase opacity and/or add engraving lines style on a bottom layer to see if it's better. I'm not really sure to know how overlap good with this style of forests...
At the start I was planning to erase mountains off the border.  And yes waves and crosshatch are made with PS ( first is engraving like pattern, second hand-made brush used with dynamic parameters)
Anyway thanks for the comment.

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## Xanuri

Nice Job, I like it

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## urxed

Those mountains are awesome. Just beautiful.

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## - Max -

Thanks xanuri and Urxed. Im very satisfied of how those brushes works  :Smile:

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## - Max -

A few advances and some stones brushes set to use next... I'm still trying to figure how overlap the trees on the forests  :Question:

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## Diamond

I don't know that you even need to overlap the trees; with the color added in they already look great as-is.

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## Wingshaw

I agree with Diamond about the colour, but it's the texture underneath the trees which I think makes the difference. I'd still urge you to consider a more varied density of trees for other forests you add to this map, although I'll also say I like the scattered spacing around the edge of the forest, too.

What problem are you having trying to overlap the trees? Why did you say you were still figuring it out?

THW

(PS: The standing stones look good btw, as with all the other brushes)

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## - Max -

A little pic to show my problem:



As you can see on this example, if I'll overlap, we'll still see the lines of the grey trees that are underneath the red ones I'll add and erasing those lines one by tree by one tree will take hours on big forests to do. Any thoughts about a different way to do?

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## vorropohaiah

make sure the interior of the trees are solid white?

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## - Max -

Hmm they are not. As far as I know, when you make brush with an element, you can only defined the shape (lines), the other parts are transparent (or in grey tones if tey wre colored).

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## Caenwyr

Can't you _make_ them white then? I'm sure that's possible. It would eliminate all possible overlap, and the white globs could easily be deleted afterwards by doing a simple "color to alpha" command on the whole layer

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## - Max -

Thanks to try to help  :Smile:  I can't make them white though ( I mean black outlines on white instead on transparent), maybe I don't know how to do them  :Confused:

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## Carnifex

> Thanks to try to help  I can't make them white though ( I mean black outlines on white instead on transparent), maybe I don't know how to do them


As far as I know there's no way to do this. You could however make trees as you want in several other ways. Examples include: copy them from one dokument to Another with the stamp tool or do them in Illustrator and just copy the trees Into photoshop. Its also possible to make a pattern in Photoshop.

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## Caenwyr

> As far as I know there's no way to do this. You could however make trees as you want in several other ways. Examples include: copy them from one dokument to Another with the stamp tool or do them in Illustrator and just copy the trees Into photoshop. Its also possible to make a pattern in Photoshop.


I'm not accustomed with Photoshop, but I know there's brushes in GIMP that have tons of different colours (there's even a bell pepper in the standard brushes, for pete's sake!). I imagine it'd be perfectly possible to have a brush existing of black outlines and a white background. I'm not sure if that's possible in Photoshop, but I guess it must be, after all GIMP is only a bit of freeware, right?  :Wink:

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## Carnifex

Well. It's not possible to do that way in photoshop. BUT you could make an "action" in photoshop that does the following: applied a layer style (with Border and fill color) and then rasterize the layer and then creates a new layer. So you click once with you brush (painting the tree), run the action (with a function key) then paint Another tree etc. When you're done painting trees you have loads of layers which you select and merge. Done.

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## - Max -

Thanks much for the help guys I'm gonna try some of Carnifex's advices to see how it's going  :Smile:

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## vorropohaiah

how about this tutorial from Schwarzkreuz? instead of making them as brushes make them individual elements - copy/paste them and then merge the layers. its the same method i use to make my own maps

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## - Max -

Thanks Vorropohaiah Im gonne take a look at this too  :Smile: 

Edit: hmm well I tried several things (work with patterns -mass pattern or individual ones, the tutorial above and such but nothing seems to work good on overlapping those damn forests. I come to think that I have either to keep it like it is right now or redo all the thing in a different way...  :Confused:

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## - Max -

So here where I am so far...Added some rivers, worked a bit more on western and north western areas. I made the northern forests more dense than the others (as for now I keep them like they are until I possibly deal with overlapping). I temporarily removed color on trees.

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## Caenwyr

That's one amazing map, Max! I can't wait to see it when it's finished!

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## - Max -

Thanks Caenwyr. Some advances : work a little more on northern area, cleaned borders from terrains, incresed opacity of the forests and erased some portolan lines under the compass...

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## - Max -

Also worked on a few cities/towns icons brushes. Not sure to use them at the moment though.

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## urxed

Wonderful work, I love your style. The only thing that bothers me is the waves, when looking at the inland detail the wave-detail on the coastal lines and in the seas look too big. A little like showing up with a monster truck at a classic car-meet. And of course this is a highly subjective matter.

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## - Max -

Yea,  I think the waves looks ok when you look at the whole map, but when you look at details closer they seems too big. I'll probably have to reduce their size. Thanks for the comment, Urxed

Edit: Just checked it on a pdf at 100% size : The waves looks ok at real size and fit well the elements  :Smile:

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## urxed

As a little side note of _pure awe_; the detail is sick. The gate into the mountain, the waterfalls and how the rivers flow... just sick (and beautiful). 
If I knew how to use rep I'd rep you to death.

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## - Max -

Thanks much Urxed. To rep someone you can find a star icon under his avatar pic, just near the "blog this post" text  :Wink:  (I think you need to have at least 30 posts to be able to rep though)

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## - Max -

A few advances : I tested out labels while making a break with terrains. Cities icons will maybe have a color touch, didn't make my mind about it yet. Also worked on some strongholds and main empire city brushes.

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## Diamond

I give this a heartfelt thumbs up.  Excellent, amazing, beautiful brushes, great color and aging techniques, nice choice of font.  Just fantastic all the way around.  The only small critique I have is that it's a bit difficult to read the text on a couple of the forests.

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## - Max -

Thanks much Diamond! I'll work later on definitve labels so I guess I'll take a look at those texts on the forests. Thanks for the comment (back to that freaking building of north eastern forest  :Very Happy: )

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## - Max -

Finally done with North eastern lands...  :Cool:  This map is just killing me! Time to go to bed...

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## Freehand 5.5

The graphics is stunningly great.

But I think the river in the northeast isn't working.
It flows very close to a mountainless coastline and then, instead of flowing right 
into the sea, it flows uphill to the top of that first of vertical walls.

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## - Max -

Thanks Freehand. That's right about that river. I fixed it. I worked on borders and started another area. i'll post update later. Here is a new little brush set I made.

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## - Max -

Last progress : I worked on the border, filled up the top left frame, make some advances in Eastern area and updated the WIP name labels...So bad that I had to lower image quality to be able to upload it  :Frown:  Well I'm tired so I guess I'm done for today.



Edit: Just noticed thre's two trees outside the border  :Very Happy:

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## Wingshaw

Max, this map is looking awesome. The image of Danakyl in the corner looks absolutely authentic, as does the compass rose. Are they your own drawings? In my opinion, this is already worthy of being selected as a cartographers choice (unfortunately for you, though, I don't make that choice  :Very Happy: ). Keep up the good work.

EDIT: I just noticed Senerin in the north. The upper bridge to reach the island emerges right at the mouth of the river. That's probably going to cause a real engineering nightmare for the builders. Somewhere with slower flowing waters might be more plausible, but then both of those bridges are engineering feats anyway, so it might not be necessary.

HW

(BTW: the non-overlapping trees don't bother me much anymore, but I prefer the much denser forests of the north)

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## - Max -

Thanks much HW! The compass and the Danakil's image are not personnal drawings, I wish I could draw like that! Compass is some old engraving stuff and the town representing Danakil is actually a 17th century engraving of a french town  :Wink:  By the xway you're right about that bridge, I think the upper Bridge upper Senerin isn't necessary and I will erase it. As for trees I'll do others forests like I did for northern and eastern ones. If I'll have time (and motication cause it takes hours to do) I'll maybe redo the western one, I'm not sure yet. Oh and you can still rate the map don't you?  :Very Happy:

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## Wingshaw

To be honest, I don't know how to rate things, but you've definitely earned some rep. (EDIT: Although apparently not from me, as I need to spread it around some more)

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## - Max -

Well to be honest I don't know as well. I Think it's just possible when some map is chosen as a featured one. Anyway thanks again  :Smile:

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## aquarits

dat map WOWser, wut font did u use? the both.

Guess have something to erase in the left down side, if nobody said.

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## - Max -

Yes thanks Aquarits I noticed it a few minutes ago and erased it  :Wink:  

Fonts used are:

Main provinces/seas of the Empire : Trajan Pro
Main  areas : Trajan Pro+Parma petit
Secondary areas: Trajan Pro
Main Cities : Day Roman
Secondary cities/strongholds and towns : Optimus Princeps

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## - Max -

Some more update : South western area done, East and south eastern areas done, WIP labels updated, added a little touch of colors on cities icons (and a special shading/highlighting on the very main city of the Empire)

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## - Max -

(First) Update of the day : Finished southern lands, added green touch on forests, added provinces borders, finished names on WIP labels, fixed some heraldic mistake, removed northern bridge above Senerin. Feel free to comment.

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## vorropohaiah

looking great. i like the touches in the upper left corner.

Edit: great work on the Blaueu-inspired mountains, they really look good

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## arsheesh

Damn Max, this looks fantastic!

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

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## - Max -

Thanks guys!

@ Vorropohaiah : No, those are brushes I've made from Blaueu's moutains (from his Atlas of Scotland). You can find them in the first pages of the thread. That was one of the purpose of the map to use those moutains. Tough I had to mix some and re-work a few ( in particular to do the biggest ones) Except those mountains, border and engravings in upper left corner, other stuff is hand-drawn.

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## vorropohaiah

> Thanks guys!
> 
> @ Vorropohaiah : No, those are brushes I've made from Blaueu's moutains (from his Atlas of Scotland). You can find them in the first pages of the thread. That was one of the purpose of the map to use those moutains. Tough I had to mix some and re-work a few ( in particular to do the biggest ones) Except those mountains, border and engravings in upper left corner, other stuff is hand-drawn.



yeah, i noticed and edited my post, though it bears repeating - the mountains are great and really do echo the feel and atmosphere of the Blaueu mountains. great work and inspired me to try and get something done in a similar style

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## - Max -

Thanks again! I had a lot of pleasure playing with those brushes. Some things you see I have to improve on the map?

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## Freehand 5.5

[river police alarm]
Attention ... Attention ... River Police Alarm ... Please stand back from that map ... we have to use the eraser!  :Smile: 

- The river that springs in the Grands Rocs flowing eastward, changes direction to flow 
   southward between two mountains, despite the fact that eastward is more plain terrain.
- The same river divides east of Heles (R. d. Larven). That's very questionable
- The lake west of La Sentinelle flows northwards to Cargild. The junction should bow to west instead east.
- The lake south of La Vigilante - where does he come from, where does he go.
   I see that there could be minor rivers, that are not drawn, but it would look better if there's a river to 
   feed the lake and to flow to the bay  northwest of Vigilante or into the stream flowing westwards through Terres de Gorjas.
- The river dividing at Dinral is questionable. I would let it flow only southwestward to the bay.
- The river flowing through Marches de Seradyn dived, too. Questionable. Far to many questionable Rivers for my taste.
   I would erase them all. Better you create some new rivers e.g. like one springing south of L'Epee des Dieux and flowing 
   through Uransol and Quinel. That would be far more realistic.
- There are many vast lands without rivers. I guess there are many minor rivers, that are not drawn.
   But if you ask me, this map would be even more awsome and mind boggling, if you draw minor rivers, too.
   It would explain the location of many settlements, beeing located in 'nowhere'.
- The rivers have no names. that's a real bummer, because rivernames are allways the oldest and best known names.
   Rivers are as old as montains, but there is no other thing, at wich lives as much people as at a river. So names of rivers
   are very old and known to millions of people. I would find it important to name them all.

[/river police alarm]

- There is that bridge between R. d. Naal and Senerin. How long is that bridge.
- That question leads me to the question of scale. I couldn't find one. Would be nice to have. Will it be in the down right box?
- There are so nice little woods in Marches D'Eldor. It would be nice to have more of them all over the map.

Sorry, there are quite a few points. Feel free to work with them.
In the end I have to say that your map is stunningly great. The montains, the settlements, the graphics in the box up left ... wow!!!
It all looks very very nice. I definitely like your style.

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## - Max -

> [river police alarm]
> Attention ... Attention ... River Police Alarm ... Please stand back from that map ... we have to use the eraser! 
> 
> - The river that springs in the Grands Rocs flowing eastward, changes direction to flow 
>    southward between two mountains, despite the fact that eastward is more plain terrain.
>  = Will probably add a moutain to make it legit
> 
> - The same river divides east of Heles (R. d. Larven). That's very questionable
> = I read that some people here say river never split but only join. thogh I read some articles that show clearly that rivers do split.
> ...



Thanks very much to have took some time to check the map in details and for your constructive comments. It's still a WIP so I'll work on some of the points you noticed like I quoted you above

*EDIT* Of course the Empire of Lorn wasn't intended to be a realistic world, that probably explains some geographical abberations  :Very Happy:

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## Freehand 5.5

Thanks for reading my comments and commenting them. (My English is so bad sometimes.)
Seems to be a very interesting fantasy world.
That makes me even more curious to see the final map.

Rivers split extremely rarely. The do eventually if a flood an earthquake a falling giant tree or big rock or anything blocks the bed or the river sediments too much sand at one point. 
River beds are constantly in motion, regarding geological ages. If a river splits in two arms, one arm will be a little bit stronger (more water per Second) and therefore will get a lower bed within a few weeks, months or years - that leads to the drying out of the other arm. Now the river flows for another thousand years in this bed, till some earthquake, flood or something other creates some chaos and the water searches for a new way to flow.
If you want to proof that, go to some public playground with a sand box and a pump well (we have those quite often where I live).
Then you can test in reality, how water digs his path through the sand. Splitting points will emphasis its stronger arm within minutes if water flows continuously down its path. The other arm dries out.

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## - Max -

I believe you on what you said, I'm far from a geographical expert so I'll try to follow your advices  (and may add some things blocking bed rivers to explain splitted rivers!  :Razz:  )

I'll probably explain a bit about the Empire setting in the finished thread but in a few words : Empire (despite is name is quite new - 200 years of existence) was born  with the coming of people from Lands of Aern on the east after great wars there caused massive exile. But the world of Lorn is way older. They called it Old Lands of Lorn who qsuickly became Old Empire of Lorn afterwards. They set there but they found a land of a great mystical power ( antic civilization of Caer-Dun in north west or an ancient oracle (non-human) living in a big mountain or the traces of the ancient people of Djiz in north east ) and magical (they also discover the existence of the Draks in west areas and the existence of an underworld where lives a dangerous people, those from Un-An-Sif)... Most of them had disappeared when they came or kept hidden but their existence on Lorn has let some relics on lands ( mystical stones, ruins, mystical glyphs on mountains, paths to underworld, wasted lands and such you can see on the map. 
Of course, many of those details on the map are exagerrated in size on the map, in order to highlight them.

Oh and no worry for your english, mine is not very good as well  :Very Happy:

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## - Max -

So, new update : Filled bottom right box, added some sea monsters (from Abraham Ortelius map engravings), added rivers names, fixed most of rivers bugs (at least i hope) and added a couple of little forests/woods here and there) and fixed some minor bugs. To be continued... A Next step will be adding minor rivers as Freehand suggested it I guess.

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## Freehand 5.5

Ah, finalment les noms des fleuves!
Nicely done and you managed all those changes quite quick. You're a pro, aren't you?

Shouldn't L'iranin and L'anduin be written in capitals after the accent?
And ... "Anduin". Hm... shouldn't you better come up with something own?  :Wink: 

I don't like the crown in the bottom right armoiries. The idea is good, but it could look more pompeuse.
Perhaps it would look better, too, if the ornament below the coat of arms is centered in a optically more fitting way.

Btw, I like your typesetting. The fonts are very nice and do not act up too much. I really like that very much.
That map, my friend, is over the top! I just pray to the lord that it has plenty of dpi.

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## - Max -

> Ah, finalment les noms des fleuves!
> = 
> Nicely done and you managed all those changes quite quick. You're a pro, aren't you?
> = Sure I am  hahaha
> 
> Shouldn't L'iranin and L'anduin be written in capitals after the accent?
> = Yes
> And ... "Anduin". Hm... shouldn't you better come up with something own? 
> = ...Anduin....F***....That's why this name reminds me of something! 
> ...


 Vielen Dank mein Freund  ya es ist 300 dpi

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## - Max -

Another update : Added some minor rivers, worked a bit more some labels, fixed some stuff.

@Freehand : about the armoiries, I wanted to keep it simple. For the others points, see my post above.

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## - Max -

And another one update : fixed bottom right border ornament, finished labels (notably tried to make those on mountains and forests more lisibles). 

I'm not far to consider the map is done...

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## - Max -

The journey in the Empire of Lorn ends here Thanks who those helped me with advices and encouragements. Feel free to comment the finished thread.

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## Freehand 5.5

I've got a question though.
How did you do the mountains?
Did you draw them on real paper or in photoshop?
What tool did you have? Some special brush in ps?

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## - Max -

> Hi Everybody,
> 
> Here's my last map : the Empire of Lorn. Mix of hand-drawn and digital work.
> 
> At the start, my goal was to mix some old engraving style and hand-drawn stuff to map this land to give it a touch of old feeling while supporting the fantasy aspect of the world. I decided to use Johannes Blaeu's gorgeous mountains engraving (from his Atlas - maps of Scotland) as one of the main feature of the map. I made brushes set with them, though I had to mix and re-work some of original drawings, notably to make the bigger mountains. I mixed those brushes with my hand-drawn stuff along some self made engraving style brushes/patterns.


Guess it answers your question  :Wink:

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## Freehand 5.5

Yeah, I read that, but it didn't answer my question exactly.
I wanted to know, if you've drawn some of those mountains completely by yourself in the style of the others on paper and scan them or did you 'enhance' parts of them in photoshop?
With the question on the brushes I would like to know in which line thickness you worked to draw the mountains. Did you draw/scan them bigger and scale them down?

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## - Max -

Hmm... no I enhanced parts of them with photoshop by mixing/resizing/erasing parts. Some lines were re-drawn but only a few. I also made brushes from the hatching shadows to be able to add some on certain parts to fit the mountains montage. Moutains brushes were made from numeric maps of the atlas so just same size as originals. For the other hand-drawn elements I used to work with a 0,1mm ink pen, scanned bigger then scaled down

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## Freehand 5.5

Yeah, that's what I wanted to know. Thanks for sharing those details.

At the moment I'm trying to reproduce this method of mountain drawing
for a completely hand drawn map. It works quite fine.

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## - Max -

Drawing some at the moment too for a curent project (I'll may post WIP later)  :Wink:

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## Aredhel

It is a mesmerizing universe. The way you organize the space make the shapes melt together and become one another. 
 Thank you.

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## thiagodeassis

Hello! I'm playing Dungeons and Dragons 4.0, and this awesome map you've done would be perfect to my campaign. Could you send me de .psd files to my email, please? Cause I just wanted to change the city names. It would be perfect if you could do this for me.
My email is : thiago_assis@rocketmail.com

Thanks since now! Cheers!

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## Freehand 5.5

I really just ask myself, what this map should have had in addition to become a featured map.

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