…but I’m going cross-eyed so I have to stop for the day! This is the map of Vokhtah at about 95% complete, if you don’t count the rest of the globe. 😀

The map is HUGE, but you don’t know how huge until you start zooming in, like so:

And then, because I’ve worked my butt off on this, we’ll zoom in a little bit more…

See that waterfall? Pinky looking thing almost dead centre of the pic? That small, not-so-important image is made up of a photo of a lake that I vectored in Corel, layered with transparent textures, reworked a number of times to make the textures blend into the background in Inkarnate…and all that’s before I made the actual fall of water. Just a tad pleased with myself. lol
Okay, enough crowing. Inkarnate is a fabulous graphics tool that’s worth every cent of the measly $5/month subscription. Like all tools though, the more you try to get out of the software, the more you have to learn. For example, to turn that picture of a lake into a usable ‘stamp’ [that’s what the graphic objects are called], I had to work out how to avoid having a nasty white edge all around the vectored image.
Without going into a full-blown how-to, these are the basic steps:
- I found an image of a meteorite that had a great texture:
2. I cut out small sections of the texture and made them almost transparent:
3. Next, I made a background colour that would make the texture blend in to the background colour of the Inkarnate map:
4. Then, I placed the vectored image of the lake onto the top layer of images, grouped all three and exported them as a .jpeg image.
5. Finally, I uploaded the new ‘stamp’ to Inkarnate and spent a few more hours finessing the placement so there would be no straight edges to betray where my custom stamp had gone. Oh…and then I had to get the waterfall right, but luckily there were some nice ready made stamps for that.
The map still needs the trade routes pathed in, and labels, and a legend to explain what all the brightly coloured bits are, but that’s a job for tomorrow. Have a great weekend everyone, and remember to stay safe!
love,
Meeks
September 24th, 2021 at 3:28 am
This looks amazing, Meeks, you are very artistic. It looks time consuming so I don’t think I’ll be trying it. I already have far to many commitments for my time, sadly.
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September 25th, 2021 at 5:30 pm
lmao – you are superwoman already, Robbie! Seriously, how you do everything you do is beyond me. As for Inkarnate…yes, very time consuming. I should probably be honest and say I’ve been obsessed for the last couple of weeks. But I’ve thoroughly enjoyed myself so I’m not beating myself up too much about it. 🙂
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September 22nd, 2021 at 12:53 pm
Diabolically clever, you are! 😀
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September 22nd, 2021 at 3:07 pm
-grin- why thank you, Widds. 😉
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September 21st, 2021 at 6:02 am
Impressive stuff, Meeks, with a high ‘wow’ factor.
You’ve inspired me to do a blog post of my own showing off my pencil sketches on torn bits of A4 😉 *hugs*
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September 22nd, 2021 at 3:16 pm
Yes! Do it. You’re another writer who does his own covers. I think it’s good for people to know that it /can/ be done.
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September 20th, 2021 at 9:14 am
So cool!
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September 20th, 2021 at 9:57 pm
-giggles- Hi Laurie! Welcome. 🙂
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September 20th, 2021 at 7:49 am
Nice! I know how easy it is to get sucked into one of these graphic projects, no matter what software you use. And layering images for texture, using transparency–I’ve done that too! The map looks intriguing.
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September 20th, 2021 at 9:58 pm
Isn’t it interesting that you, Diana and I, we all love getting our hands dirty with graphics? I think we create damn nice covers too. lol
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September 21st, 2021 at 10:26 am
It’s another creative outlet that’s different from writing. I’m trying to decide if I should stick with my self-made cover images for She Who Comes Forth and its sequel (the current WIP) or go for pro-made ones. I’m actually tempted to do my own thing!
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September 22nd, 2021 at 3:15 pm
I like you covers! That said, Chris the Story Reading Ape has a recent article about the choices available.
https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/49735291/posts/149776#comment-280327
in case you haven’t seen it already.
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September 20th, 2021 at 6:56 am
Very impressive indeed! It is cool to get lost in an imaginary land. Corel Draw is a blast from the past. I had it at one time, but I use Gimp these days, though I haven’t the patience you have.Unfortunately “good enough” is my standard.
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September 20th, 2021 at 7:33 am
lol – hi Chuck and welcome. 🙂 I keep threatening to go to Linux but the force of habit is too strong. Is Gimp like Corel Draw or more like Photoshop?
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September 20th, 2021 at 11:13 am
Gimp is free on both Windows and Mac, as well a linux. It is a lot like Photoshop — layers, masks, text layers, manipulating images, etc. It helps if you know something about Photoshop, but it is probably not as polished. I haven’t used Photoshop in like two decades, and Corel in three so I can’t really compare it, and I’m not a power user. I mostly use it color correct & crop photos, plus I create my covers with it. If you have a map making software you like, it probably isn’t a must have, though I know that there are Youtube videos on how to make maps in Gimp. But did I mention that it’s free?
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September 20th, 2021 at 9:49 pm
Thanks, Chuck, free is always good! I actually have a Corel program called ‘Photopaint’ which is, I assume, similar to Photoshop but…I’ve never used it. It came bundled with Corel Draw 8 and I installed it but that’s as far as I’ve gone with it. I might give Gimp a try, to see if it’s any easier to use. Thanks for the headsup. 🙂
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September 20th, 2021 at 4:02 am
Very cool! Great job. It’s fun to get lost in a project–especially nowadays.
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September 20th, 2021 at 7:39 am
Hi DV! Yes, I haven’t had this much fun in ages. lol And it’s useful too. Win-win. 🙂
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September 20th, 2021 at 3:40 am
Goodness gracious. That looks like a ton of work, Andrea, but I know how absorbing (and sometimes, relaxing) it can be, especially when the brain needs a break from writing. I do the same sort of thing when making covers… creating a little blurred image of mermaid scales from an image of a fish. And then pasting it 40 times at different angles. Lol. Your map is amazing. The nice thing about ebooks is you can pop it in there if you want to… in full color. 🙂
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September 20th, 2021 at 7:43 am
Oh My God….lmao…High Five multiple times!!!!! And yes, it is very relaxing. I was so stressed out last week, working on graphics definitely kept me sane.
And yes on the ebooks too!
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September 20th, 2021 at 9:16 am
😀 😀
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September 20th, 2021 at 1:26 am
I used to do a ton of work in Corel. I believe that program might be 25+ years old now. These days all I create are flow diagrams for work. I hate flow diagrams. Nice map.
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September 20th, 2021 at 7:48 am
High Five! Yes, at least 25 years old. I honestly can’t remember when I first started using Corel, or why, but it’s still brilliant for vector graphics. Don’t tell anyone, but I could never get the hang of photoshop!
Um…flow diagrams…maybe do some moonlighting with Corel again? lol
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September 19th, 2021 at 10:52 pm
It’s marvelous and, once again, you’re reminding me of Tolkien. The closest I’ve come to a drawing in preparation for a story was a minimalist sketch of a small building outlining who lives on which floor. This was for the yet-to-be published Monster inspired by the Hound of the Baskervilles. I needed it to determine how sound would carry—and to whom—in the hallway, and how people might meet on the stairs. YOU are as detailed at Tolkien!
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September 20th, 2021 at 7:51 am
-giggles- working out how sound carries in a building is pretty Tolkien-esque, imho! But I’ll take the compliment with thanks.
I’ll check Inkarnate to see if you can do the inside of buildings. 😉
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September 19th, 2021 at 10:06 pm
Wow, just wow! Thanks for sharing some details about your process. I really must look into this Inkarnate!
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September 20th, 2021 at 7:53 am
Hi Stephen. 🙂 If you decide to give Inkarnate a try, I suggest just subscribing for a month [$5] as the free version really doesn’t give you a good enough feel for what you can do with the software. lol I love it.
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September 20th, 2021 at 7:54 am
Thanks much for the tip!
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September 20th, 2021 at 9:57 pm
Welcome!
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September 19th, 2021 at 6:38 pm
Heavens, so now I can genuinely claim to know a genius.
Hugs Galore
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September 20th, 2021 at 7:54 am
-snort and cough- Hardly, Daud! I suspect I’m more Engineer’s daughter than ‘artist’. 😉
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September 19th, 2021 at 5:46 pm
Very cool! It’s amazing how much work goes into any fantasy map – it’s really a complex work of art. Good stuff.
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September 20th, 2021 at 7:59 am
-nods- after a couple of false starts, I dredged up what little I remember of primary school geography to make sure water does flow downhill. 😀
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September 19th, 2021 at 5:37 pm
If I ever need a map… I have walked some paths on Google Earth.
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September 20th, 2021 at 8:00 am
lol – Google Earth is about the only thing I give Google credit for these days. 🙂
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September 20th, 2021 at 10:13 am
I am not jaded – Google is still my first stop, followed closely by Wikipedia (which I am proud to support every year). As a writer mining the real years 2005/2006 to make sure you feel you have been taken back to them by a time machine, I am rarely not able to find what I need – something that was NOT possible when I started writing Pride’s Children in 2000. I am happy to thank my lucky stars.
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September 20th, 2021 at 9:51 pm
lol – on ethical grounds, I stopped using Google quite a while ago. I now use Duckduckgo which seems to be just as good, in terms of searches, but doesn’t spy on me. Like you, I support Wikipedia as well. It’s only a tiny bit, but it’s something.
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