Fantasy Cartography: Just Add Something Blotchy | Hacker News Reader

Fantasy Cartography: Just Add Something Blotchy

rolltop-indigo.blogspot.com

100 pointspolm2313 comments

My favorite example of food texture is the fried chicken explosion: https://i.imgur.com/UhAODHB.gif

Finding good fantasy mapping blogs is hard, I don't know too many, to anyone else interested in this Here Dragons Abound[0] is really good resource.

Any others people really like?

-[0]: https://heredragonsabound.blogspot.com/

I really like them as well. I enjoy them as a digital art form.

From what I understand, Scott Turner (Here Dragons Abound) got his inspiration from Martin O'Leary[0]. Lots of interesting reading on his site.

Another one in current development but as far as I know doesn't have a devlog quite like Scott Turner's is Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator[1]. He did keep a devlog until 2018 sometime though[2].

Watabou's Medieval Fantasy Map Generator[3] is really good.

I'm sure I've seen more over the years but these are the ones I can remember.

[0]: http://mewo2.com/notes/terrain/

[1]: https://github.com/Azgaar/Fantasy-Map-Generator

[2]: https://azgaar.wordpress.com/

[3]: https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator/devl...

Thanks for the suggestions :)...

Going to dig into these!

Now, as a metaphorical example, this has much wider application.

- What sound texture can I add to my ambient tracks?

- What flavor texture can I add to my cock-a-leekie?

- What philosophical texture can I add to my pitch deck?

Interestingly, I think I recognize the background tile on the page as a member (or slight modification of a member) of my favorite wallpaper package propaganda-debian. In any case, author is clearly a connoisseur of textures.

Nothing to do with cartography specifically, just "parchment" effect.

That's a lot of words for an entry level Photoshop tutorial.

On the one hand, you are not wrong. On the other hand, the idea to use a texture like that of a pizza to modify a completely different image, like a fantasy map, might not have occurred to everyone. The value of the blog post might be rather in telling others about this idea than the actual steps how to implement it.

Context is king. A tutorial is just a steps-to-reproduce guide, but the story helps you to remember it. Except for food recipes...

As a fervent fan of the author, I can confirm that definitely was the idea.

Yeah, but it's on an RPG blog, not a Photoshop blog, so think of it as a fantasy map tutorial with an unfamiliar tool.

Knowing how to use Photoshop is one thing. Knowing what tricks you can use to make effects work is another.

How many high level Photoshop tutorials have you been publishing recently? Do share.

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