Since September, I've been working on my campaign setting, and last Wednesday was the kick-off of the campaign. I had created a map for the setting (the Imperial province of the Streamdales), but it came out rather blurry and... not so good. So I bought CC3 to make up for my lack of artistic talent. ;)
I have, so far, three maps: a map of the whole province, a map of Lugan and the area directly to the east of it, and a map of the village of Barwin -- each time zooming in on a smaller part of the province. The two overland maps were made by following the video tutorials (and so they look similar to that), the village map was made by following the CD3 tutorials by Gandwarf. I'm also going to make a map of the Barwin Keep ruin, but I need to watch the DD3 tutorials for that first. ;)
This is my first set of maps, and I'm looking for suggestions on how to improve the contents and the look of the maps.
(And if you have the stomach for it, you can also read the 24-page PDF with the setting, which also contains some further information on the topography of the province.

EDIT: I've changed the map around a bit. I've re-drawn the roads to follow the rivers more closely. I've also changed the labels for the rivers so that they are always read from the bottom up.

EDIT: Removed the map, later version in a later comment.

This is the map of Barwin village.

EDIT: I've made the river curvier, added a 'dead arm' on the river with a light forest and a tea house near the water, a path to the tea house from the road, and the start of the Matrun Road from Barwin all the way to Finak.

EDIT: Removed the map, later version in a comment further down.

Definitely gonna read the pdf! Always interested in new settings! As for your maps, they're pretty awesome, however I find the roads too strait. If you let them bend a bit more and give em more curves (like what you did with the beginning of the road from Leneg to Lugan, also let the roads follow rivers etc.) that makes your map look more interesting, same goes for your rivers.

And I'm not sure if the rivers at the marshes are correct, but a river-expert will point it out ;)

Anyway, I hope this will help you a bit :D

The third map of the village of Barwin is my favorite.

And yes, the rivers need a lot more curves :-)

So, I did need to make the rivers more curvier to make them look more natural. But if I drew them 'by hand' (so to say), you get that pseudo-random thing going on that just looks artificial. So I cheated: I looked up some rivers on Google Maps, took a screenshot, put the screenshot in a layer underneath my rivers and simply traced the rivers onto my map.
I did this for the main provincial map, the map of Lugan and surroundings and for the Barwin map.
But that also meant I had to move the villages/cities around for a bit, redraw the hills and dunes, re-lay the roads etcetera. It's done now, and I'm pretty pleased with the result.

This is the new version of the Barwin map. The tea house went to the other side of the river, and the village square got a bit bigger and a bit less square. ;)

Posted By: LeviathusVery nice! The rivers look way more natural now! Good work.

Thanks! And the rivers better look natural now -- they're the traces of actual rivers. :P

A little blur effect on the fields would look nice.

Posted By: mosswood17I love that look of the farmland in the closeup of Barwin. I saw a technique someone else used to give a little more texture to the grassy areas. You drop it into Gimp and can use that to stamp some brush strokes onto the grassy areas. It tends to break it up a little. Nice maps!

Thanks! And if you know where a description of such a technique could be found, I'd be very interested!

Posted By: Henrie61Good idea to use actual rivers to trace over. never thought of that. They look good now.

Thanks!