Looking for some advice/critique on my map

kesselya · April 2015

Hi cartographers,

I've got a project that I'm working on, and I've created a new world for it. I generated some fractal terrain, and then traced it out in CC3+, and then added some stuff to it. If anyone would care to give it a critique, I'd love any feedback you might have. I know that I'm going to have to redo this eventually, I just want to see what major mistakes I'm making and learn from them for next time!

Thanks so much,

Kess

[Deleted User] · April 2015

What else can I say but..WOW

Dogtag · April 2015

Looks great. I really like the layout.

One thing to think about is that rivers typically join on their way to the sea (or to a lake), they don't generally split. There are exceptions, of course, and they do tend to break up at deltas, like the one near The Cathedral. That said, I'm talking about how rivers behave on our magically-barren Earth. They could behave otherwise on your magical world. I find, however, that the closer I keep to reality in most areas, the easier it seems for people to suspend their disbelief in other areas.

I really love your forest layouts, though. Your map looks terrific!

Cheers,
~Dogtag

kesselya · April 2015

Thanks guys. I spent probably 8 hours on this so far today before I thought it was in a state to even try and ask for some advice for it. Dogtag - do you know of any fantastic sources out there for understanding river patterns? The mountain ranges followed the fractal that I generated, but rivers ... they confuse me! I loved making the delta by the Cathedral, it was very satisfying.

kesselya · April 2015

Going to go with this for now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drainage_system_(geomorphology)

Sven · April 2015

Looks good, though there seems to be rather unusual river patters compared to what normally happens. The river near the cathedral looks very good as do the ones flowing south into the Iron Sea, but the others seem to jar the eye. I would also soften the transitions between terrain zones since that would make it look more appealing.

kesselya · April 2015

I've spent a significant amount of time redoing this to make the features look a bit better.

Barliman · April 2015

The rivers by "heart of the Mountain/Palmyra" look much better, but Iprefer the older version of the delta by "Cathedral." And the split of the river above "Tithe," unless there's a magical explanation, just doesn't look right to me. One item I hadn't noticed before but quite like is the blue labels with blue glow for the water bodies. That looks very nice, better than plain white.

seycyrus · April 2015

Kesselya, your original delta was fine.

Dogtag · April 2015

Hi Kesselya,

Most of the changes you've made look awesome! I agree with the others, though, that the delta by the Cathedral looked nice before (though some of the thinning you've done since looks nice too). I especially like the changes you made to the rivers along the southeastern coast. Looks like the river to the

As for good info on rivers, there's a really good ProFantasy blog post on the topic, titled The Rules of Rivers. In addition to the good info in that post, it also has a link to a very informative and nicely "illustrated" PDF article.

I really like the additions and tweaks you made to the map, particularly the Court of Stars.

Cheers,
~Dogtag

kesselya · April 2015

I made it a bit more like the original delta, and fixed up the river on the island with Dragon's Hearth.

Edit: Sorry for the first image. It didn't export properly, and I couldn't preview it. And I can't figure out how to delete it either. =\

Edit 2: For anyone who wants to see a much higher quality image (along with the progression of the map), there is an Imgur Album

Barliman · April 2015

This latest version looks very good.

(Dogtag, thank you for posting that link to the post and PDF on rivers. That looks very handy.)

Joachim de Ravenbel · April 2015

The final map is great!

But... if I may say so, I rather prefer the original delta...

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Looking for some advice/critique on my map

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