That looks waaaaaay better. Maybe tone down the opacity of the glow if possible or reduce how large it is. I bit destracting from the visuals of the map.
One little nit pick is the forest fill. Nudge them a bit closer or throw in a few additional solo trees to disrupt the tiling effect. Maybe some of the other users have hints for reducing tile effect.
Overall I really like it, has a nice classic fantasy feel to it.
Edit. Personally I don't like the sepia tone. I like colour or black and white. Maybe try it in green???
I think decreasing the glow and increasing the transparency of the text. Also, rivers normally run from source to a sea, lake or other bodies of water. Also looks like there are a few spots where there are symbols or fills over rivers, so might want to move a few things so your rivers have unobstructed flow.
ScottA gave me a good idea that could work for your map.
The rivers in Urkhadi could all flow inland and the city that resides in the plains could actually be on a large island in a large lake, that probably wouldn't be visible from shore. Thus making it a mysterious hidden city. So if the lake was about 250 miles across. No one would be able to see it unless they were riding a dragon. (10 000 feet you can see the horizon at 122 miles) Seeing as there are no mountains near, not many people would stumble across such a place.
1: Lowered opacity of the fog around the letters by about 20% 2: Took vegitation stamps and stamped over the forests, trying to make curved lines into them 3: added political borders layer
I've been thinking about this for awhile. On next iteration i'm going to put a big lake in the middle and dry out the area away from the lake, due to lack of rainfall.
Iteration: fix urkhadi union region, rainfall makes no sense boxed in by two continental ridges 1. Took the cool lake idea. 2. Trimmed rivers from 4 to 2 3. made area surrounding great lake marsh 4. Made area surrounding marsh plains 5. Made most of central urkhad a steppe/savannah due to lack of rainfall
Keeps looking better and better. That's the trick, you have to just work at it, tinker and tweak things. I think the text glow could come down even more -- decreasing the blur size to a very low number will give your letters more of an actual glow and make them pop and less fog, unless that is the look you desire. Adding an edge fade to the fills would give you a more even blending instead of sharp cut-offs between different types of areas. Also, lowering the opacity on the fills gives a smoother, more naturally blended look. Glows on the rivers and lakes would do the same thing. If you want your coastline a little more jagged you could use the FRACTALISE tool. You could also add a BEVEL to your landmass if you wanted it to look raised a little.
There is so much that can be done. It all just depends on what you want to do and how much time you want to put into it. I've spent hundreds of hours on my big continent map, and I'm still tinkering with it!
I really appreciate the feedback so far. I'm thinking about starting this one over after updating CC3 in a different style, and have a different look at going about it. Scott, your comments about symbols going over top the rivers is a good point, and I'd like to have a map I can zoom in and do a Jpeg section of with a different scale for each Country individually, with a master map for the world and continent.
So, I'm going to next update CC3 and install annual 2006 for the 13th age mapping style, and start again, with this as a sort of blueprint, but this time i'm going to attempt to do the landmasses to the whole world, atlas-style, then zoom in to a continental level and start making mountain ranges, then back off and go in real close one country at a time until I've got the main campaign area filled out, then zoom out to the more exotic areas.
This way I can post small changes and get feedback and move on. I've learned a bit doing this map, mainly I need to think hard about how topography's going to effect my climate.
I'll keep posting the progress in here if you'd like.
this looks very interesting so far. However, when redoing the map, I would consider changing some of the rivers. Especially the one that flows down the peninsula of Lydion does not seem to be very realistic. There are more rivers that appear very naturally because they pass places where they could seemingly flow into the ocean more easily. Also, when thinking about climate, keep the size of your continent in mind. This map seems to be 1000x1000km, which means that the entire map would more or less fit into western europe. Depending on where in the world, you want your continent to be, the plausible options for having different climata could therefore be a bit restricted. This is of course only true, if your world is about as large as ours. If you wanted this continent to have a similar climate as Europe has, with with a cold north and a warm south, then I would consider making the continent 16 times larger, so it is 4000kmx4000km.
Anyway, this critique only refers to the scale of the map, not to its design, which is in fact very nice.
Comments
color:
Sepia:
One little nit pick is the forest fill. Nudge them a bit closer or throw in a few additional solo trees to disrupt the tiling effect. Maybe some of the other users have hints for reducing tile effect.
Overall I really like it, has a nice classic fantasy feel to it.
Edit. Personally I don't like the sepia tone. I like colour or black and white. Maybe try it in green???
The rivers in Urkhadi could all flow inland and the city that resides in the plains could actually be on a large island in a large lake, that probably wouldn't be visible from shore. Thus making it a mysterious hidden city.
So if the lake was about 250 miles across. No one would be able to see it unless they were riding a dragon. (10 000 feet you can see the horizon at 122 miles) Seeing as there are no mountains near, not many people would stumble across such a place.
1: Lowered opacity of the fog around the letters by about 20%
2: Took vegitation stamps and stamped over the forests, trying to make curved lines into them
3: added political borders layer
Thanks for all your feedback so far!
I've been thinking about this for awhile. On next iteration i'm going to put a big lake in the middle and dry out the area away from the lake, due to lack of rainfall.
1. Took the cool lake idea.
2. Trimmed rivers from 4 to 2
3. made area surrounding great lake marsh
4. Made area surrounding marsh plains
5. Made most of central urkhad a steppe/savannah due to lack of rainfall
Keep the comments coming guys!
like mountains more like NC/TN less like the cascades....
The political borders are something I love, and use them often. Mostly for myself though as reference.
There is so much that can be done. It all just depends on what you want to do and how much time you want to put into it. I've spent hundreds of hours on my big continent map, and I'm still tinkering with it!
So, I'm going to next update CC3 and install annual 2006 for the 13th age mapping style, and start again, with this as a sort of blueprint, but this time i'm going to attempt to do the landmasses to the whole world, atlas-style, then zoom in to a continental level and start making mountain ranges, then back off and go in real close one country at a time until I've got the main campaign area filled out, then zoom out to the more exotic areas.
This way I can post small changes and get feedback and move on. I've learned a bit doing this map, mainly I need to think hard about how topography's going to effect my climate.
I'll keep posting the progress in here if you'd like.
this looks very interesting so far. However, when redoing the map, I would consider changing some of the rivers. Especially the one that flows down the peninsula of Lydion does not seem to be very realistic. There are more rivers that appear very naturally because they pass places where they could seemingly flow into the ocean more easily.
Also, when thinking about climate, keep the size of your continent in mind. This map seems to be 1000x1000km, which means that the entire map would more or less fit into western europe. Depending on where in the world, you want your continent to be, the plausible options for having different climata could therefore be a bit restricted. This is of course only true, if your world is about as large as ours. If you wanted this continent to have a similar climate as Europe has, with with a cold north and a warm south, then I would consider making the continent 16 times larger, so it is 4000kmx4000km.
Anyway, this critique only refers to the scale of the map, not to its design, which is in fact very nice.
Cheers,
Hadrian