Coloring Your Map Part 3 (Final, for now )
I colored my map shortly after my video, but a lot happened, you know what I’m talking about. It’s strange to think that when I wrote part 1 on map making, the world was normal(-ish). Since COVID-19, I spent more time in my writing cave, writing and editing. Every now and then I get on my Xbox and play Destiny 2 for some Gambit Prime. But other than that, I haven’t done any reading, but I did a swell job having a consistent schedule…sleeping until 6 or 7 a.m.
Let’s get back to focusing on the beauty of coloring your maps, and some feedback I got from my first video. In my recent video Coloring Your Map. I mentioned that a friend found it interesting that I did not suggest using your hand-drawn map for making a globe/planet.
You have to be extra careful about hand drawn maps when you’re using world making software.
Below is my map as a globe, with no changes. Straight out of my scanner.
Below is my map with changes.
Since Asylum is the sister planet of Earth. (More on it will be revealed in The Hunted Prince and future videos) I had to take into consideration the body of water for my planet. If your world is more water than land and is focused on islands, you wouldn’t want any world making software to make it look like there’s a puddle of water. But a map with no exaggeration of water would be perfect for showing the important islands that will feed the story that your character/hero/protagonist/antagonist will travel.
Blue Green Brown. Rinse and repeat.
The first thing you’re going to do is choose one shade of the three and stick with that shade. It doesn’t’ matter if you’re coloring digitally or with color pencils. Try not to steer too far in choosing a high contrasting blue with a pale one. Have a safe zone, like choosing your colors first, will help you best. If you look at other people’s maps, you can see they have a feel to it. Some people use little colors, no detail, more warm colors, or cool colors.
Set the base and build on top of it, carefully.
I say carefully because unless you are digitally coloring your map, there is no back button to markers and such. (But would have already followed my other advice and made many copies of your map, right?)
Probably add green first when drawing on digital.
When I first colored my map, I drew continent brown and figured I can add the green over it since the terrain makes up the landmass, but it didn’t work for me. It looked like I was adding green spider legs over the land.
So I did it in reverse, used darer tone colors instead. This was magnificent for me because my symbols were extremely helpful in adding my dry climates. My goal was to make my world appear like it was being viewed from space. Color was the biggest factor here. We can barely see a mountain of Earth from space, and the ones that do look like a line of raisins.
The rest is up to your skill but, most importantly, your goal.
Make your map work for you, mine will be in videos, my books, trailers, etc. I can also now focus on smaller regions, kingdoms, cities, towns. Yay! But that is for another project. It’s time to close this Map blog journey until I work on a new one. A big thank you for everyone who has commented, liked, and shared. I hope this had helped you, inspired you, or gave you the kick to get to work.
Stay creative.
