Local Map of the Sea of Tears in Herwin Wielink Style

HadrianVI

Hi,

this is a local map of the area called "sea of tears". The name of the bay comes from a legend that says that this bay once was a vale. In this vale there was the greatest city ever built. It is also said that this vale was the birthplace of mankind and the city called Alanor was a gift from the almighty god called "Amon". After centuries of peace between all people, some began to turn away from the almighty. Those who were loyal to Amon finally managed to defeat their enemies and drove them out of the vale. But Amon was upset by the hatred he saw and decided to take back the gift he made. So the vale sunk into the sea. Men shed thousands of tears into the rising waters. Therefor the bay is called "Sea of tears".
But the northerners, who had seen southern civilizations rise and fall, deny that there has ever been anything like the great city of Alanor or the vale. In their tales there was nothing but a bay.
The land around the bay is inspired by northern Italy. I hope you like it.
(Sorry for the grammar mistakes, I'm not natively English speaking.)

Greets Hadrian

BwenGun

That's a very nice map!

I really have to say that I love the Wielink style, if it had some symbols for the settlements of different cultures, or trees to represent jungle or subtropical forests I'd use it almost exclusively for world building.

Mateus090985

Again, a VERY nice map. The effect of the forests near the mountains turned out superb!

My only concern is that its seens that all the map using this style turn out to be very similar IMO.

HadrianVI

Thank you.

You are absolutely right about the symbols. They worked quite well for the northern part of my world but some variations would be nice anyway.
I'm thinking of buying a wacom tablet to be able to draw some symbols by myself.

Greets

Hadrian

Mateus090985

Maybe add some symbols / ornamentations from here helps: http://rpgmapshare.com/index.php?q=gallery&g2_itemId=554

I use the criatures to give life in my maps, but I normally use these ones: http://www.immortalnights.com/tokensite/index.html

Maybe trying to change the rivers colour would also give more life to the map. The problem IMO is that there are always too much green.

HadrianVI

I tried to change the colors of the rivers but it didn't turn out very well. The only colors that didn't make it look worse, were dark green or dark blue. While dark green only added even more green, dark blue was actually pretty nice but it didn't mach with the color of the sea. I may change the color of the sea as well.
The problem with this map may also be, that it is a rather small area which takes place in only one climatic zone. Therefor there are not many vegetational variations. Also, there are many human settlements and farms, which also leads to a rather boring landscape. But in my opinion it is important to have such areas in the world, because otherwise it would not be possible to feed armies that are several thousand men strong.

Here's a version with political borders, they may bring in some life.
EDIT: Here's also a blue version.

Mateus090985

The blue version is splendid! It gave a much needed contrast. also yours political borders are also good. They, with the blue water makes the map a now really beautifull thing to see

BwenGun

I must say I do rather like the blue ocean as it's much easier to look at than the cold greeney grey of the original oceans. Did you edit the ocean .bmps for the ocean using something like GIMP to get the effect?

Also, on the issue of variation, you could always try adding a few small islands off the coast. Nothing really larger than a couple of miles, but something to break up the relative smoothness of the coastline, at least from this level of zoom. I'd also reduce the scale of the hill and farmland texture and then add in some singular trees and hills here and there to make the thing feel larger and more chaotic. Though shrinking the texture sizes for those fills may just be something I always feel the urge to do as for some reason I can't help but feel it odd when hills are the same size, if not larger, than mountains.

Mateus090985

Posted By: BwenGunI must say I do rather like the blue ocean as it's much easier to look at than the cold greeney grey of the original oceans. Did you edit the ocean .bmps for the ocean using something like GIMP to get the effect?

Also, on the issue of variation, you could always try adding a few small islands off the coast. Nothing really larger than a couple of miles, but something to break up the relative smoothness of the coastline, at least from this level of zoom. I'd also reduce the scale of the hill and farmland texture and then add in some singular trees and hills here and there to make the thing feel larger and more chaotic. Though shrinking the texture sizes for those fills may just be something I always feel the urge to do as for some reason I can't help but feel it odd when hills are the same size, if not larger, than mountains.

Yes, reduce the scale of the hills is a good idea as is to put islands! (i LOVE islands)

HadrianVI

Thank you for the feed-backs.

No, I just made a sheet called "Background II" and used a blue solid filled box to get a blue background. Then I activated the effects and made it a bit transparent.
I think I could add a few islands. The last map I made had a coastline full of fjords and it took forever to draw them. How can I rescale the textures? I wanted to do that on another map but didn't know how to do it.

Greets Hadrian

Mateus090985

Posted By: HadrianVIThank you for the feed-backs.

No, I just made a sheet called "Background II" and used a blue solid filled box to get a blue background. Then I activated the effects and made it a bit transparent.
I think I could add a few islands. The last map I made had a coastline full of fjords and it took forever to draw them. How can I rescale the textures? I wanted to do that on another map but didn't know how to do it.

Greets Hadrian

This way:


Edit the fill style.

1. Click on the Fill Styles Indicator, the Bitmap Fills tab, and find the texture on the Fill Style Name pulldown.
2. Reduce the Scale Width and Height (maybe to 50%) and OK.
3. Try again until it looks right.

HadrianVI

Thank you very much.:)
Edit: I've added some islands and rescaled the hills and the fields.

anomiecoalition

I also like the blue ocean, but the blue rivers look a little stark and jagged to me (maybe a subtle edge fade with transparency? or explode -> straight to smooth?).

I really like the subtle color variation you get in the map with borders - looks like you might be able to use that method (minus the bright border colors) to achieve more variation in the landmass that folks were mentioning earlier.

Overall - a really really nice composition. (Jealous)

Henrie61

Good map. Like the blue version the best.

Maybe a bit of work on the rivers. Some of the pointy ends look a bit unatural too me.

All in all a good map, espcially with the political borders.

HadrianVI

I fractalized them like ten times:P that's why they have pointy ends. I should have used the smooth function

Thank you