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StarRaven — Map of Shalyeun
Published: 2009-07-10 00:27:10 +0000 UTC; Views: 14399; Favourites: 60; Downloads: 358
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Description
200 years ago, in this land of Shalyeun, a star fell to earth, and the world began to change.Even now, 200 years later, pieces of this "star" continue to be found all over Shalyeun. They are jewel-like shards, valuable not only for their beauty, but for the fact that they hold within them magic, ranging from mundane to powerful.
There is, however, a flaw in their power - they corrupt and kill the natural magic of Shalyeun, making it impossible for those who use the shards.
The Jenaviir believe the star shards are a gift from the gods, and use them to power magical weapons to protect the people from the beasts that have been corrupted by the star's power.
The Aldynni, on the other hand, believe that the shards are a curse, and seek out the fragments to destroy them before the magic of Shalyeun is beyond repair.
As these wars rage, something has begun to stir in the darkness beyond our world. It wants the star shards, and to get them, it will purge mankind from existence.
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Comments: 33
nice, will be looking at your sketch tools with gimp/aesperite playing around with a map concept myself right now
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WIll the cave enterance be in a future Brush pack?
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Oh... did not notice there was more then one.
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Very nice! I love the color pallet--fantasy maps are always browns and grays and deep blues--it is nice to see something a little lighter!
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I don't really like white because it's impossible to put a nice texture on it. I used it for this because the original was pure black and white, since the original intention was to print it out and draw all over it, hahaha. After thinking hard about how to do the country borders, I decided to just make them different colors on the digital version, and I guess it worked out.
I'm glad you like it. 
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Fantastic...er!
I still can't get over those mountains... and I just noticed that thar be monsters in them thar waters!
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Thanks.
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Yes! Tutorial please! Those mountains rock out loud.
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For a little more fantasy-appropriate solution for your marshes (i.e. a hand-drawn look), you could modify that cartography marsh symbol by removing the vertical "reed" marks, and only featuring the 2-3 horizontal dashes for your map. I've seen that done on a few maps before, but I wouldn't know where to point you. Just run a search of fantasy novels, and check out their maps maybe? Certainly at least one of them has a marsh.
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*slaps forehead* DUH. "Fantasy" the one word I haven't included in my Google image searches. Thank you, thank you, thank you. In my weeks of searching, I think that's the best advice so far. Haha!
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and i love the mountains you did there XD there so pretty
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Thanks!! I'm quite proud of them, actually. They're kind of a pain in the butt to draw out by hand (just because there's so many of them....) I tried to come up with a custom brush (or a set of custom brushes) that would work for them, but I haven't managed anything yet.
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o.o u did all that by hand.... u are a god. teach my oh great master.
lol
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It's not nearly as hard as it looks, hehe. Let me see....
[link] Here's a great tutorial for Gimp, even though it's not the style I used on this map....
I've learned a lot from the Cartographers' Guild, even though I have managed to come up with some things (like those mountains) on my own. Maybe I'll make a tutorial. Tutorials are hard.... D:
It's pretty easy. I just scribbled in where I wanted them to go on a mostly-transparent layer, and then drew them in one at a time on a new layer from the bottom up....
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ty for the link and advise XD, your always so helpful, i wish i knew more people like you.
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The Cartographers' guild is full fo them! you should post some of your maps there, you'll be shocked at all the great advice you get! (Lots better than I can give you... haha.)
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I've been debating it for a while now, i just don't know what I'm going to be doing yet, i might be taking my book down form here fore a while until i can get my head straight. ill defensively leave my art up though and keep ppl posted no how the book is coming.
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i had the same problem with my maps, the only way i could work around it was to pick a kind of marshy color and draw a bunch of interconnecting rivers through it (kinda like a delta)
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Yeah, that's a great idea for a colored map, but I was hoping to make this one printer-friendly. (So, a plain black-and-white only version....) D: I might have to succumb to doing this whole map in color, or at least shades.
Thanks for the idea, though!!
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yeah I've never been vary printer friendly in my work, the only other thing i can think of is to come up with a custom symbol and a map key telling people what it means.
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That's true. There's always map keys.
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How about this?
I find the standard cartography symbols always work great. They also require a lot less thinking on my part.
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Hmm... those were suggested to me by someone at the guild, too, but I didn't realize it was a standard cartography symbol. Haha. That's nice... if I use it, I'll feel a lot less like I'm copying someone's idea! XD
Thanks for the tip!
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Forgot to say that what you have so far looks awesome!
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