Anserine's Flight Rising Blog

There’s this ONE nature dragon named Brad currently chilling in my lair….

i made a good outfit

A more realistic approach to the map of Sornieth

Here we go! I’ve been working on this with @antimoany​ and @errantmoggy​ (and some input from everyone in the FR IRC) for the last week or so. I proudly present to you: Sornieth, with less Escher and more mountains!

Full sizes as well as .psd and .mdp files available here!

Description: An attempt at making a more realistic map of Sornieth. Assuming a planet with similar temperatures as Earth, 1.5x the size. Some regions were moved around to better match their climate, mountains were added/reshaped to better follow the climate, etc.

This map is free for use! The link includes the .mdp and .psd files for a reason. I encourage people to modify them to their liking, add the location of their clan (and allies?) to it, draw train or trade routes on it, anything. I only ask that you link back to either this post or the sta.sh link if you use it.

Some general notes:

The flight regions names are not on the map because of space constrains. I think they should be relatively evident, though.

Some regions have subregions that are also not named. More on this under the cut.

Fire’s landscape is ever-changing. The lakes pictured are permanent lava lakes, but there are also constantly shifting rivers and craters that are not depicted, especially in the Molten Scar.

Cloudsong is not depicted because it is not a stationary landmark.

Similarly, Arcane has a few floating islands which are not depicted.

More design notes under the cut.

How to do accents. First what is important is .psd

(I’m only using photoshop, I can’t really help much with other programs)

what’s important in .psd is “accent parts” folder

in accent parts folder you should have base layer, here named “accent goes here” and shadow and lines layers clipped to base layer.

(I didn’t downloaded .psds from the site in ages, so I don’t remember if all of them are organized the same way, should be similar. If not you can make  new empty layer that will work as your accent base and clip copy of shadow and lineart layers to it)

Shadow and lineart layer should not be edited, you can change their color, but that’s all!

What is important to you is “accent goes here” layer (which I will call accent base, or just base layer). Here is what happen when you draw on base layer:

shadows and linearts are clipped to the base so they will be there whatever you draw.

Now here goes your first trick. How to create mask to make your accent always stay within base

(gif starts with “hold ctrl, click on base layer”)

—-

So alternative way of adding masks

right click* on the dragon base layer then “select layer transparency“ in CS2,   ”select pixels” in CS6

right click* on lineart layer “add transparency mask”

click on the folder with accent parts

now go to menu layer>layer mask>reveal selection

*make sure you are right clicking on the little layer thumbnail image

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Now to the accents making part.

All you have to do is draw on the base layer.

here is simple tattoo style accent, one gray layer:

done

here is another tattoo style accent, this time with color:

it was done on multiple layers, later flattened together to create accent base layer and then had shadow and lineart clipped to it

now for other type of accent, that mimic accesories:

basically it’s image with it’s own lineart, own shadows and lights, that have orginal shadow and lineart on top of it.

here how these accents look finished.

Basically all you have to remember is for these two layers

to be there on top of your accent image and for nothing to stick outside off the base.

One more example of how it look on actual accent and not these small quick examples above

Skins work the same as accents, but they just cover more area.

And I guess that’s all that really is to it. The rest depends from your idea and art skills ^^

New bio Templates! (Full size previews on the thread) The codes and ressources made for these bios can be found here as well as other previous stuff!