WIP - Velaedin Empire

I'm a top-down worldbuilder, so now that I have my continent done I'm ready to zoom in and start detailing regions.

This is the next level of zoom on the Velaedin Empire, where most of the novel takes place. I'm branching out into a totally different style here; after drooling at Ramah's Vaniya/Aronbor maps I decided to make an attempt at a handdrawn map in the same vein. Plus, this is the type of map the folks who live here would probably have access to.

Here's the first rough. I have the inner border, coastlines, and rivers in, a paper texture so that the first line drawings wouldn't be all white before I started messing with color later, and I've started on the mountains. They're all handdrawn using Ironmetal's tutorial.

I'm a little concerned that I've overdone the mountain detail a bit. Does it look like it's going to be too busy once I go over everything with watercolor-ish color?

With that level of detail, I think it could be highly dangerous to start tossing colour all over it. That's looking really nice hand-drawn kind of thing and I look at that and think "Wall Sized Parchment/Vellum"

I would say that the mountains look very good at the moment. I'm not sure how it would look when you put watercolour over it, but at the moment the mountains look very pronounced, and really stand out (mind you, there isn't anything around them), but based on what I've seen other maps of that type look like, I would say it is an excellent start

Thanks Rythal :)

@Juggernaut: That's exactly the feeling I was getting :(

What I'm trying for is an ink-and-watercolor-on-paper look, and that means simpler mountains, I think. Harrumph. Well, before I go back to the proverbial drawing board, I'll try to get the color in, and then I can redesign to match it if necessary.

Splash some color on there and post it up, the worst that can happen is we say it doesn't look good. :)

Good point, SG :)

Here's a quick pass at the color. It lacks finesse, but effects to make it look actually watercolor-painted can wait (if I can ever get them to work). I had toyed with the idea of coloring mountain/hill areas brown, but I think simple blue and green are plenty. To make it as good a test as possible, I also did a little ink-bleeding.

In case anyone's wondering what the crazy creases are, it's to simulate a rolled map rather than a folded one. I used the very scientific abuse-a-sheet-of-paper-and-scan-it method.

So, what do you think, guys? Mountains good as is, or should I go simpler?

I like 'em...Ramah-esque. And that's a very good thing.

The colors are very 'subtle' and work well with your existing mountains.

Map On! :D

Thanks for the feedback, guys. Full speed ahead with shading mountains :)

Well, I had every intention of waiting until the mountains were done before I posted an update, but this is glacial. Had to post up some progress to keep myself going.

More mountains done here, and some color tweaks.