Advice on this early alpha version of a map
This is an early version of a map I'm working on - its hardly anything to write home about and I'm no l33t cartographer. However, I'd like some advice on some specific issues, how to proceed, and general tips.
1. the town on the eastern river... the line of the river is visible behind the symbols and it makes it look kinda messy. How do I make the symbol background opaque or... what do I need to do here?
2. CLUTTER... I want to name a couple of the towns/forts, and the stone hendge... possibly the rivers too but i'd settle for not doing that. However, this map already looks cluttered to me.
3. Negative Space. So there's some negative space in the northwest, and also off to the east under the title. The eastern area I was thinking I would reserve for a symbol legend but... with the symbol set I've got that is starting to seem unneeded... the Northwestern area (the horse lord steppes) is supposed to be a kind of unknown quantity to the map writers, so I suppose it should be empty... but it dosn't look great to have that much empty space i think?
4. an impression of altitude. May relate to above, but there's a lot of verticality in this setting. Highvale is at sea level at the south end, but is a high mountain pass at the north. The steppes are not at sea level, but are at a lower elevation that the pass into highvale climbs out of. Westmarch is supposed to be your sea-level breadbasket type of place. Without adding lots of contour lines (which I think i'd make a mess of...) how should I give this impression?
5. do the forests look awful? they look awful, don't they?
6. I'd like to add a scale... but I can only find the one that says "miles"... I dont want to be beholden to that! What I'd like to do is resize one that says "leagues" and establish in-universe that this means how far a cohort marches in a day on a road... but I can't find a symbol to use for that and this exhausts my non-skill level with cc3 LOL
other than those specific issues... i'd value experienced input into how this map is coming along and tips for how to keep working on it.
1. the town on the eastern river... the line of the river is visible behind the symbols and it makes it look kinda messy. How do I make the symbol background opaque or... what do I need to do here?
2. CLUTTER... I want to name a couple of the towns/forts, and the stone hendge... possibly the rivers too but i'd settle for not doing that. However, this map already looks cluttered to me.
3. Negative Space. So there's some negative space in the northwest, and also off to the east under the title. The eastern area I was thinking I would reserve for a symbol legend but... with the symbol set I've got that is starting to seem unneeded... the Northwestern area (the horse lord steppes) is supposed to be a kind of unknown quantity to the map writers, so I suppose it should be empty... but it dosn't look great to have that much empty space i think?
4. an impression of altitude. May relate to above, but there's a lot of verticality in this setting. Highvale is at sea level at the south end, but is a high mountain pass at the north. The steppes are not at sea level, but are at a lower elevation that the pass into highvale climbs out of. Westmarch is supposed to be your sea-level breadbasket type of place. Without adding lots of contour lines (which I think i'd make a mess of...) how should I give this impression?
5. do the forests look awful? they look awful, don't they?
6. I'd like to add a scale... but I can only find the one that says "miles"... I dont want to be beholden to that! What I'd like to do is resize one that says "leagues" and establish in-universe that this means how far a cohort marches in a day on a road... but I can't find a symbol to use for that and this exhausts my non-skill level with cc3 LOL
other than those specific issues... i'd value experienced input into how this map is coming along and tips for how to keep working on it.
Comments
2. Try using a smaller font size for the settlement labels; or maybe a different font. Or use a numerical key, with a list elsewhere on the map (see 3), or alongside it.
3. Empty Space. Do you really need all that much sea? If not, you could move your landmass southwards, which would mean the mountain tops on the northern edge aren't being cut off any more, and it would leave some extra space for developing a few details in the Steppes - add some grassland, scrub and /or meadowland symbols (assuming I'm right in 1 about the symbols you're using), for example, maybe a marsh or a small river line too. If you're not using a key, why not add some flavour text under the map's title - "Mapped by X, the Great Cartographer, in the Year of Y", for instance? As for the blank Steppes, there's nothing wrong with adding "Unknown Lands" or the classic "Here Be Dragons". That's what happened in our reality at times!
4. Elevation. At present, the larger mountain symbols are distributed so it looks as if Westmarch is substantially higher than the southern part of Highvale. The use of smaller tree symbols and the winding road in northern Highvale by contrast makes it look as if the ground is indeed rising there, which is probably more what you want. Try replacing with some smaller mountain symbols along the Westmarch side of the mountains, and maybe bulk out with some larger mountains towards the north end of Highvale. Maybe consider adding some more mountains behind the castle at the top of the pass, and then continuing the road down into the Steppes to suggest it's really a pass, not a dead end valley where the castle is. You might try adding some hills on the Steppe side of the mountains too, even though they'll be mostly hidden by the nearer mountains.
5. The forests look OK to me. The larger deciduous tree symbols in Westmarch look somewhat odd contrasted with the smaller ones in Highvale is all. You might try reducing the number of trees in Westmarch, or perhaps tinker with the symbol sizes for the trees in Westmarch a little.
6. Scale. Why not make use of the black and white border instead of having a scale bar? Make each division a certain distance to suit your definition of "league". Or simply draw a scale bar you can add labels to as you wish, in whatever form you please. As long as your map scale is correct, and you know what it is - usually miles or kilometres for overland maps - you can set up a snap grid to suit whatever distance you like to make drawing and labelling such a scale much easier.
Beyond these specific queries, your map looks fine. Depending on the actual scale involved, you might want to add a few smaller - and probably unlabelled - settlements, and perhaps a few other minor details, though that has more to do with what purpose the map's to serve, and what information you need/want to show on it, something that's impractical to advise upon without a lot more information!
Thanks for such thorough input - each point is proving useful and i'm going back over the map to tweak away until i get it how I want it.
I dont know how i forgot about sheets... as soon as I read that I facepalmed. I used CC3 a little a few years ago and am a returning user, so I guess time just made me forget lol.
Thanks again! :)