1. You lack patience. You posted your map, and a mere eighteen minutes later, here you go bumping this thread. A forgivable sin, to be certain, but a lack of patience will not serve you well, when it comes to cartographic undertakings.
2. Mountains? What mountains? You mean that there are mountains on this map? Oh, those things - those are mountains? How dreadful! I share your disappointment with them. I leave it to you to fix them, however. May I suggest that you obliterate these, and spend a little time crafting some real mountains - of the kind that will make men to sit up and take notice?
Typically speaking, mountains should be the predominant feature on most maps. Yours are, well, what some might call blobs and squirts. They are unworthy of the title, mountains.
3. Your map has coastline sections that are simultaneously quite large and too rounded, to boot. Whatever were you thinking? These areas are wholly at odds with my eye. They don't sit quite right in my view scape. They retard my ability to appreciate what it is that you are trying to accomplish with them and through them.
4. Your greater coastline, if I may call it that, is less jagged than would ideally be the case.
5. Such a large land mass, and such few islands. A pity.
6. The green color assortment that you use, I find that to be appetizing. That desert area in the south could stand considerable improvement. That frigid snow-covered region in the far north, thumbs down. It's largely a bunch of white, with little in the way of character to entice the eye to be drawn to it. As such, why is it even there? The various parts of your map should all be continuously dueling for attention from the viewer.
On this early incarnation of your map, my eye settles on the green. Very pretty, but largely an exercise in abstract art. Why? Because, your map lacks detail, and because it lacks detail, it lacks character. The green is quite beautiful. The remainder isn't.
7. This map cries out for a border. Not all maps do. This one does. Borderize the beast.
8. That interior lake is atrocious.
9. I see that you have plopped down a number of what appear to be rivers. Rivers are probably the single hardest thing on a map to get right. You will be pleased to learn that you have not quite mastered the art of rivers, yet. In all fairness, though, most haven't. I couldn't draw a realistic or passable river system on a map, if my life depends on it. My life doesn't depend on it. If you get a lot of the other stuff right, the human eye will tend to be more forgiving of the rivers that you do get wrong.
10. Are those dark green splotches supposed to be forests? If so, I can grasp that. But, is that what you are after? Do you seek to make them blend in, and not become a focal center of gravity, visually speaking? Or do you want them to take on their own identity within the overall map, itself? What is your grand objective?
11. The elevated coastline effect, I have mixed feelings about. It will work very well, with islands. It would work better, here, as is, if it was also applied to those large inner bays, and if the small islands were wrapped by that effect independent of the larger land mass, itself.
12. You have spared us the indignity of textual atrocities. For that, I thank you. Get the features and points of interest right, first, and then worry about your text labels, afterward.
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Originally Posted by GrimFinger
