First Map. Suggestions?
I just bought the program and an Annual a few weeks ago and have been having fun figuring the program out. Anyway, I completed my first overland map. It is just practice, not part of any project. I was hoping that those of you with more experience with the program than me, which should be all of you, might offer up some suggestions on how to improve. Be honest. Be brutal. I want to learn. Thanks in advance!
Comments
Edit: Just copied the link and went there directly. It's a very nice start! What style did you use for the map?
One suggestion: you have a river starting in Nograd (if I read that right) that looks like it flows south out of mountains into flat lands and then back into hilly country. I can't think of a real world example that works that way. The river would be more likely to follow the slope of the flat land, or form a lake.
As Barliman pointed out already, some rivers have a bit of a weird pattern, but I'm guess I'm just one of those "river police" guys
The dark thingy in the centre of the Blighted Wastes has a bit of an odd shape that doesn't look very natural. Is it on purpose ?
Also, what style did you use ? I really like how it looks and how you used it, especially in the southern area of your map. Edit : nvm, just saw your previous post
The river don't look that off to me. Maybe it's because I don't consider the forest as a plain, but as sitting on the foothills of the mountains. Maybe a little lake at this place would look nice though.
I especially like the unnatural dark thing in the middle. It's not just a volcano: It's the lair of something evil, creepy, that slowly expands and corrupts the surrounding lands! That must be stopped somehow, but who will be brave enough to stop it?
I took a close look at the rivers and have no problems with them. I can see the flow of the overall terrain; from the mountains, wooded foothills (which is hard to do since there are no real symbols for these), lower hills, and then open ground - so that river seems to be fine. :-)
The only suggestion I can think of off the top of my head would be to consider adding some roads. I don't recall seeing any and I think they could add some food for thought to your map (who travels those roads? why do they go there but not there? etc.)
Bravo. Thanks for sharing. If I can think of anything more helpful later, I'll be sure to come back and post it.
Cheers, and welcome to ProFantasy and the forum!
~Dogtag
The dark thing in the middle is supposed to either be a natural explosion or a wizard's experiment that went wrong (or right). The mountains to the south are named The Protectors because they protected the lands to the south from the explosion.
Or I like it!
If I was going to make any suggestions, it would be this... and it's back to the rivers again. When I first saw the rivers, I thought they were roads... until I noticed they flowed out to the sea. I think it may just be the color to me. I don't know if this will work with the style your using... but maybe you could put just the tiniest bit of an inner glow to them? maybe in a slightly darker blue or something? Just to make them stand out just a bit more.
Of course it might just be me... I'm no expert by any stretch.
What I did for my lakes and rivers was to add a glow effect. I chose a regular glow, but in the top box where it says mode, I checked inside instead of outside. I then chose the darker blue color.... and you can choose what ever color works for you. I made the strength 3%, made the blur radius 1 unit, then used percent of view width. That's how I got my lakes and rivers to look slightly darker on their outer edges.
If you don't want to do that, you could always try the change properties, and change the color to a different blue.
And that's the extent of my knowledge at this point! I'm still learning too