First stab at a medieval fantasy map

[Fredrik Rydén]

Hello forum, would like some feedback on a map I started working on!

Basically I'm imagining it as a feudal nation divided into duchies and counties, each with their own ruler. The climate is temperate in the south, and colder in the north, with a couple of mountain ranges dividing the country. The main population centre is the fertile south and the northern lake, and the valley connecting them.

I'm trying to give it kind of a digital feel, doing as much as possible with layer effects without making it feel too plasticky. I want it to have a neat feel to it, and I want it to be big and detailed enough where you can zoom into just one area and you'll really get a feel for how it fits together.

I've tried a bunch of ways to do the mountains, but i can't sem to find one I like. Any ideas would be helpful.

map4.jpg

[Freodin]

That is a great start!
The clear stark black outlines and the colouration give it an almost cartoony look. You might try to lower the scale of your wood and farmland textures to improve on that look.

Another thing that you might want to check is the famous "How to get your rivers in the right place" tutorial... it might help the layout of your rivers.

I'm sorry that I can't help you with the mountains, but I hope that some of the posters here more knowledgable with this particular style can provide some good advice.


All that said: welcome to the forum, and have some rep for posting a map in your very first post!

[Corilliant]

Oh, very nice!
I especially love your forests, I need to try something like that one day.
I can't say much else, Freodin summed it all up very well.

Cheers, and welcome to the guild.
*bonk*

[fabio p]

I think it's a nice start and you're doing a good job in keeping it clean and digital as you would like it to be.
Since the overall feel of the map is top down, for the mountains I would go top down too, maybe like this.
Of course you can personalize your own style for your map and try and give it a more "digital" feel then in Torstan's tutorial.

[Fredrik Rydén]

Thanks for the feedback guys!

map4-2.jpg

Maybe too early for another WIP but I've been slaving away with this and I think I'm making good progress!

I'll definetely read up on my rivers for my next project, for now i was content with adding some extra ones to the ones I already have. For the mountains, I used a nice tutorial - they're getting there but I still want to shade them in some way that doesn't suck.

I don't know, maybe I've gone overboard with the textures now, it's so hard to resist!

[Azélor]

Your rivers are still wrong. Some seems to flow in 2 directions at the same time and they split before reaching the sea. It's possible but it's suppose to be rare. And also, generally, lakes have only one output.