I recently began 2 Dnd 5e campaigns which take place in the same universe of Estryae. I wanted to create a diverse overland map to help situate my players and help build the story I was beginning to create.
To begin with I hand drafted a map with pencil and photographed that map. I made some minor edits to the brightness and contrast to make the lines easier for me to see.
I used this photo as the background layer for my Photoshop map. Creating layers above this base I filled in the land mass with a nice soft green, the ocean with a dark blue, and began tracing the coastline. I use a Wacom tablet but this could be accomplished with some gumption and a mouse if necessary. I traced my forest outlines, plopped in some rivers, added a basic texture the ocean and filled in those forests. Below you can see some of the forests have been shaded and some have not.
At this point I continued adding a bunch of cities, more detail and coloring to a lot of areas and began planning a bit more intensely. I worked a little bit on labeling but had a lot of trouble settling on fonts.
I should have some update posts coming on this map in the next few days. I have been working on adding a lot more to this recently.
See the continued progress here.
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