Thread: Posedoa - A return to cartography

Hey all, thanks again for the feedback, I've updated my map with some simple town names and an even simpler compass rose to give it a more finished look. I think I'll stick with this style over my old line art heavier maps, the only downside I'm seeing is that it displays less detail and I'm going to see on how to refine that.



-Thanks Ghostman! Happy to help decorate
-Dain, yep just photoshop and my cintiq wacom
-Larb, go for it! Initally a painterly style isn't easy cause it looks crappy at the beginning till you get some brush and overlaying textures down. It only really comes together at the end, but it's worth it!

Beautiful compass rose.

The labels seem ok, but I'm not quite sure I like them... In some places the dot before the place name looks unnecessary as the place is very clearly depicted on the map (for eg. cities as clusters of buildings). I understand however that they might be necessary because of the painterly style. The fact that some of the labels are transparent also bothers me. For some reason the title blends well with the style but the labels do not. In my opinion at least. They look quite good but not perfect if you know what I mean...

That's absolutely beautiful!

I'd suggest adding a little grey to the labels to match the color of the compass rose.

I love the look of your mountains, the misty look of your rivers, and the texture of your forests and other land vegetation.

Fantastic job!

Nice painterly style. I wouldn't want to have to navigate using this, but it is beautiful to look at. Even with foreshortening, the deltas at the bottom look exaggerated.

Wow, this is a BEAUTIFUL piece. Love the style!

Thanks for the critic, Lyandra and priggs, I'll actually edit the map, you're totally right about the title font fitting better than the city names, and I may have over did it with the dots.

Rdanhenry - The bottom is a swamp, its meant to more spread out than just a delta mouth of a river. I've had more than one odd forshortening comments so maybe that unclear swamp feature is the problem... dang.

mariuccij - Thanks, I hope to perfect it!

Beautiful!

This looks really good, and similar to what I am looking for for my homebrew game.

Wow, beautiful style! I love the colours you're using. If you hadn't said you were open for critique I'd feel overly nit-picky for these points, but:
- I think the labels seem out of place because they don't look like they're painted at all, and as such they don't combine with the map very well. The dark outline with white font helps the text stand out, but I don't think it would be painted that way. The opacity in some also helps clarify size of towns, but same issue here. Since this map doesn't seem to be made for precise navigation anyway I think you could get away with labels which are less clear, but fit the style of the map better.
- I'm not sure what's going on with the grey area near Narak. Are they cliffs, stone mountains?