# Gallery > Cartographers Choice >  Jasmine Coast - by Ascension

## ravells

*Map* (Click to enlarge)




*Created in:*  Photoshop 

*Review*

Ascension has taken his distinctive and much emulated style (thanks to his popular tutorials) to a new level with this map, by following a tutorial by Su Liam, another Guild member.

The stand-out point is the depictions of the cities which stand bright against the dark brooding background.

Ascension says:I tried a completely different method but still ended up in pretty much the same place...so that's cool. I tried doing something like Su Liam's recent tut but only from memory; had I actually followed it I may have had different results. This hybrid method got me going quite quickly and I had the basic map done in about 10 minutes. But because I need definable areas to create masks I had to go back and re-figure everything out and that took some time. Then I had to clean up artifacts that can still be seen in some places along the coasts (banding) and that killed a few hours. Getting the ocean right was probably the hardest part so that's why I had to re-figure things in order to mask it off. The forests went quickly, scattered dry brush, pattern overlay, textured bevel, and some color tweaks. The rivers, as always, killed most of my day.*Original Thread*

To go to the original thread click here.

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## pasis

This is a great pick. Simple and yet full of details and guaranteed Ascension style.

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## Alfar

Beautiful work.

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## Blamenck

That is epic beyond belief.

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## töff

Ya, I really dig that one.

You guys noticed the "mounted glass" lettering style in the title, right?

I like the trees. The individual trees.

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## Greason Wolfe

As always, some magnificent work and well deserving of being selected as a Cartographer's Choice.  I always look forward to seeing Ascension's work, even when it is just a little experiment.

GW

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## someguy

That is one sweet map!

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## robb75067

> Ya, I really dig that one.
> 
> You guys noticed the "mounted glass" lettering style in the title, right?
> 
> I like the trees. The individual trees.




Ascension: How did you get that glass effect on the title letters which are AMAZING.

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## Ascension

Holy crap, I can't find my psd file!  Good thing I have these styles saved.  I zipped em and here they are.  Umm, where is the paper clip thingy for managing attachments?  It appears that I've lost that as well.  So maybe I can post it in the wip thread.  Ok phew, I found it (was called untitled 1).  I can be really dumb and forgetful sometimes.  The zip with the layer styles did upload in the wip thread hereas post number 29: http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...9922#post69922

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## craggles

Amazing map!! 

I'm not too keen on your rendering of the land under the water - where it goes into deeper regions; I feel using a darker blue for those areas would come out better.

As for the rest... I'm in love! Your style on world maps is amazing but this closer view shows the mountains and trees at their best. Beautiful! Colours are amazing (as they are with all your other maps too).

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## Davaris

Epic map. Love the way you blended the big area names in with the landscape.

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## paulbhartzog

I know this may seem like begging (cuz it is) but could you please share all the glorious fonts that you used in this map?  I've never seen such evocative lettering styles.

(and the map doesn't suck either ;-)

thx for sharing
-p

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## Ascension

Sure, they're listed in the WIP thread here.  Page two of the thread.

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## paulbhartzog

I went looking for them and found them there after I posted my question.
I was able to find/download the actual font online, too. :-)

Sad to say, I could spend eons going through fonts.  I love typography; a lost art for sure, alas.

much thx
-p

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## Guldaroth

Excellent Job ! I really like the aesthetic of your map...

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## Kinra

Very beautiful and detailed map! I'm envious of your skill.

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## jenniferspeta

I like It and I'm in love! Your style on world maps is amazing but this closer view shows the mountains and trees at their best. Beautiful! Colours are amazing

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## dickovdk

I for one have also been drooling all over that map. Its simply perfect - how large did you make the original picture. I mean when I zoom down everything is beautiful and clear.
On top of that I love the way place names, they arent covering everything and simply blend with the whole art work. 

This is one of the best I have been able to check out since I found this site some months back.

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## Ascension

Your looking at it full size.  99% of the time I am zoomed in at 200% to make sure that everything looks good so that's why the clarity is there.

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## rdanhenry

This is one of those maps, not terribly uncommon on the CG, that makes me wish I had a huge monitor to view it on.

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## monks

Cool map Ascension. I like your rivers and the artistry. 
 One criticism if I may, well as a terrain head, I'm biased towards depiction of terrain, but you could improve your map by doing some erosion on it.

 This is something I tried. I wanted the erosion to flow along the rivers I'd drawn on the map. 
Create a selection mask of your hand drawn rivers.
Load terrain in Wilbur.
Load selection mask.
Apply a filter to incise along the river beds.
Run erosion.

Erosion should  now pick up on the river beds. Rivers will flow along them. What's more all tributaries running into the rivers will give you lots of extra rivers for free, or just visually knit the terrain together more naturally should you not want to add them on the map. You can save out the rivers texture and use that as a selection mask. Sometimes erosion can alter coastlines too much. But you can save out  terrain, separate to the original uneroded terrain, and then combine them with a blending mask in Photoshop or Gimp in such a way that you don't have any erosion creating havoc in your lowlands.You could even combine the river selection with those two mask to get more control over where the erosion goes.

Another approach is to do thing the opposite way round. Get your terrain and run the erosion. That will tell you where the rivers are naturally forming. Draw your major rivers in such away that they connect more naturally with how the land is flowing. Incise the rivers, run the erosion. You can get the best of both worlds of a map the way YOU want it to flow, and all the extra work that erosion can do for you without you spending eons drawing it.

monks

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## Ascension

I've tried doing erosion and I always get these long straight rivers, I mean perfectly straight for long spans.  It's most likely a problem with how I do a height map, which is to say totally amateur and probably wrong.  I do need to figure it out, though, so thanks for reminding me.   :Smile:

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## monks

Did you look at Joe's (Waldronate) tut on the Wilbur downloads page? It's dead easy. He adds a say 5% of noise between basin fills. With 0% noise, yes I got the straight rivers too, but with 0.5% noise, the rivers were more natural. 5% may be too much, but as I say, you can discard the noise after you have your river texture created, just revert back to your uneroded original. A little bit of random (unstructured) noise is ok imo. I tend to apply filters with my rivers selection masking out the river beds so as not to disturb existing river beds. :Wink:

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## Ascension

Yeah, I've done all of the tuts there just to feel my way around the program.  I never remember the steps so anytime I try to do it I just hit my bookmarks.

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## Domo230

This is amazing, the style of it is exactly what I would do if I knew how.

I would love to see a how to tutorial for this.

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## damirith

Well done, i like the colors that were used!

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## jeepee

nice graohics, love that!

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## Robulous

Lovely map but the text details are quite hard to read, particularly zoomed out. I guess it depends what size you'd eventually use it, but for a screen-sized image it's not easy to see detail.

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## TheMarquisDeSpace

This is fantastic

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## Mathayus

Your choice of colors, texture and city layout is intriguing. Very well detailed. I think a great compliment to the regional map would be some close up views of slected cities.

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