Thread: valahn, a beginner's attempt

You call this a beginner's attempt? LOL. Your map is awesome and I repped you for it
Man, I love the way you did your cliffs and the Valahn label! Very cool style.

Some criticism:
- the two forks in the river in the northeast don't look fully natural to me. It looks like the rivers fork on low ground?
- Both your places and labels are all in black. You might want to do something to them. Like give the places icon a white edge. Or give the text a glow. Don't change other labels, like the Soulless sea. Those look great!

So how many hours did you put into this map? And what kind of book are you working on?

not to many about 1 hour in making the land and sea mass and texture (I'm very well trained in photoshop and gimp). Really it is easy, I was just thinking on making a vid tutorial for making land masses.

river placement though (as you note) is where I'm slowing down as well as going over my story outlines and placing the areas accordingly.

Only 1 hour? Sheesh! Give us a tutorial already
A video sounds really good...

Also, what kind of book are you working on?

A dark fantasy novel. A map is not really needed I i don't need to tell you guys that it is catchy and a lot of fun, and not to mention it really adds inspiration.
It is slow going at the moment I spread myself very thin with several art and music projects between my normal day job.

This is really nice! Reminds me a bit of the maps in the Wheel of Time series.

Just a few minor critiques;

1) Turn off the grid, it doesn't really add anything. Now if its there for a specific reason then just ignore this.

2) Gandwarf already pointed out some of the river anomalies, and you stated that they were still WIP so no biggie there.

3) The labels for the cities, etc. need something to set them off some they tend to blend in to the background a bit, either a stroke, glow, whatever.

Great job, looking forward to seeing where you take this.

I didn't even see the grid. I am curious how it looks without it. Somehow I think it does add something, but I will only know for sure when its turned off.

Very nice map! Well done!

My only comment is that the sea could use a little less texture. It stands out too much, almost as does the land.

I agree with the comments about the grid. Also, are the white highlights intended to be cloud cover? I'd like to see it without that as well. Those two elements almost give it a self-conscious look, as though there are flaws you're trying to cover up with effects. From what I can see of the underlying map, though, that's completely unnecessary. This is a beautiful style, and I'd really like to see it unobstructed.

Regarding the rivers, before you get too attached to their locations, remember that rivers rarely fork into two flows as they go downstream. Rather, they join together. So you'll have many rivers in the highlands, and as they fall toward the sea, they'll join together to make larger rivers. You're not going to see a place where a river shoots off a branch to the sea but still continues on to a lake.

Also, there are places where two rivers join where the junction is inverted. Specifically, take a look at the tributary that joins the main river just southwest of the "a" in the aldian plains label. The water looks like it's flowing out of the tributary headed due northward, then immediately changes direction to the southwest. That turn should probably happen prior to the confluence, unless there's a waterfall there or some other unusual landform.