The Tremontine Continent: A map for a fantasy novel series

[MeiLin]

Hi folks--

I'm neither an artist nor a cartographer but I'm having fun working on this map. It's way overdue--book one is already out--and it's a good way to avoid writing book two. I'm using the Saderan tutorial to work on this, but I'm using Gimp 2.6 so it's inexact. I don't have the vegetation layers in nor the rivers, country/duchy lines or major cities marked, and I'm not happy with the mountains and general elevations. I have no idea if I've even got the right scale; the continent was randomly generated, but within a couple of difference cloud applications I got a shape that was scarily accurate for the world that's lived in my head for four years now so I went with it. Thanks for all the info you guys share so generously here. I've been looking for something like this for a long time.

tremontine-continent-wip1.jpg

[jtougas]

Looks good. The scale seems massive enough based on the size of your mountains. Speaking of your mountains you may want to try to lower the opacity of the "snow" layer. Although from this altitude they would look pretty much like you have them.

[MeiLin]

Yeah, I just laid down the snow layer; I only just started "carving" it, in fact I just spotted a giant artifact I meant to get rid of before posting. *headdesk*

Thanks for the comment. Looking at it now I think I'm happier with the mountains. I think I need to post it with the rough overlay of the duchies and cities and give some idea of distances to see if I'm totally high or what.

[MeiLin]

Hi folks--

I haven't had time to either work on this map or come by here until today. Here is where it stands now:

tremontmap-1.0.preview.jpg

It's far from done; I haven't placed the cities or rivers yet, for instance, and I'm not 100% happy with the contouring. Thanks for sharing this community with me.

[tilt]

looks good. I'd spend a little more time on the labelling, lot of your labels are very straight, and that often seems a little of, also try keeping the labels inside the landmasses (or bodies of water) - but very nice - looking forward to seing your rivers and cities added as well

and have some rep

[arsheesh]

I agree with Tilt. I also think that the labels are a bit on the large side, but otherwise I think it looks really nice.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

EDIT: BTW, nice to see another member here from P-town!

[MeiLin]

Yay, Portland!

I wasn't sure how to handle the labels. Good to know. I was just thrilled I figured out how to set type on a path. Thanks, guys!

[tilt]

you could try looking at other maps for inspiration - in my signature try clicking finished maps and then look at "Mountain Realms", I've labeled using size of text for size of element (mountain, forest, city etc) and also used colors to differentiate between the countries and different elements

[Steel General]

This is coming along quite nicely.

[zaffu]

Nice! I really like the watercolor effect of the background colors.