Thread: The Subcontinent of Takunda - WIP

Alright, update.
Started Engarnia in GIMP. Made custom brushes and did all the terrain features and such. Lemme know what you think:


Next I'll start on feature names (Carmellian Mountains, etc), then I will do towns and such. Not sure how I will do the compass rose and map legend. I wanted to make a fancy box with the Nation's name, brief description, etc. Was wanting to look at some other legends to see how other people did them, but I can't seem to find any. I'll keep looking.

I won't bite if anyone comments, I promise

Update: Added some text, mostly just playing with colors. What do you think?

Also added coastal blur and textured the sea.

Originally Posted by tyrandan2

I won't bite if anyone comments, I promise

Sorry, with some maps, it takes some time to gather your thoughts.

First thing: very nice geography.

Basic colour schema for the gimp-map also looks good... pehaps you could make the ocean a little lighter in tone, and the mountains a little darker.
Another thing that I would like to see changed... adapt the relative sizes of mountain/hill brushes and forest brushes. It looks a little wierd when your trees are so much taller than the mountains.

Originally Posted by Freodin

Sorry, with some maps, it takes some time to gather your thoughts.

First thing: very nice geography.

Basic colour schema for the gimp-map also looks good... pehaps you could make the ocean a little lighter in tone, and the mountains a little darker.
Another thing that I would like to see changed... adapt the relative sizes of mountain/hill brushes and forest brushes. It looks a little wierd when your trees are so much taller than the mountains.

Thanks! Yeah, I've been thinking about the mountains as well. I'll probably darken them next. And thanks for pointing out the tree/mountain thing, looking at it again I realize you're right. I'll probably make the trees smaller.

Update!



Added all the towns and cities, more place names. Played around with the sea and coasts a little bit, but I'll probably have to play some more. Did some more work on the mountains, experimenting with some diffusion, though I'm not sure if I like the result just yet.

Nice work with the bird-eyes view of the major cities... though now I have to ask: what scale is this map?

Hehe, Freodin, that's a good question. I originally decided on 1 mile per 20 pixels, but I'm not so sure anymore. I intended to include a note in the legend that the cities are drawn not to scale, but that seems kinda weak. I'm not worried about the distances, because those are represented accurately either way, but the size of the cities is a concern. It's been a headache. This isn't just a cartograph, it's a worldbuild, and so I've put a crap ton of thought into it.

Do you have any suggestions?

A potential suggestion, yes.
Basically, I would use icons for the cities. The bird-eyes look very nice, but they suggest a certain scale... a lot smaller than you want to have. Icons are scale-neutral.

I would suggest a simple 2-D silhoutte style, as used in the classic 17th century maps. I used such a style in my Elmsriggen map. Or you can go for something more elaborate... a wonderful example was used by Cereth in the Xendria map. With the second style, you should adapt your other icons though.

Now if you still want to have the bird-eye-view of your major cities: you could make little sideline maps for that, as in the Joan Blaeu map of the Duchies of Slesvig and Holstein.