Avora

[mephet]

As some of you might now, NaNoWriMo (short for National Novel Writing Month) started about a week ago. The point is to write 50 000 words in just 30 days, and this is my 2nd year attending the challenge, and hopefully, my 2nd time winning as well.
The map details the setting of my NaNoWriMo fantasy novel. This is my first real map ever, hand-drawn and coloured with PS Elements 2. All things considered, I'm happy with the way it turned out.
A summary of Avora's current position, as well as hints to my book's plot:
In the land of Avora, humans, elves, centaurs, goblins and satyrs have lived in relative peace for centuries, only occasionally disturbed by trolls or internal squabbles. Recently, however, a sudden chaotic event has completely altered the world. After a dreadful fire that destroyed most of the Golden Woods, the elves found themselves stranded without immortality for unknown reasons. In a desperate attempt to prevent their death, most elves have taken up necromantic spells, draining living creatures of their life and gaining those years of lifetime themselves.
With the Golden Woods so tainted with unholy magic, the nature of Avora has slowly started to change, causing even colder climates to the far North, and bad harvests everywhere within the corruption's reach. This sudden imbalance has awakened the nymphs, who can now be seen wandering further and further away from their homelands, drawn to the burned elven woods, and attacking anyone who seemingly threatens them.
In this world of rising war, our heroes must band together to find the true source of evil, the cause of the great fire, and of the disappearance of elven immortality. The word has it, that strange winds blow from the Northern sea, a rising call...
Any textures used are from this site, most (if not all) of them are from the big "Land / Sea Fill Textures" topic in the Mapping Elements forum.

Map.jpg
E/ Anyone else seeing a weird gray line in the middle of the map when opened? Any reason for this? :/

[Larb]

I like it, I think the hand drawn aspect really adds to it. I think you could consider inverted the text colour, using white text with a black stroke so that it stands out more.

[Rythal]

It looks fairly decent!

some crits that I can suggest either this or the next map:

1) the black stroke around the trees and the buildings seem too bold, though there may not be too much you can do about that if it is scanned in.

and

2) the various tones of greens and grays/blacks seem bland with no contrasting colours. I would focus on making your towns and buildings stand out colour wise (maybe a roman theme with white walls and red roofs, or just some brighter/saturated browns.). Maybe take a look at some architecture of buildings from the setting you are looking for, and identify predominant colours, if you feel so compelled.

Also, I think it would look better if your castles dropped the brick texture altogether.

I do like the hand drawn style though; it could use some refinement though

[mephet]

Thank you both a lot for your praise and tips!
The text and the castles were both things I really wasn't sure what to do with, so I gave them a shot. I agree that the brick texture doesn't really work. I'll look into what colours to use best with the next map (I've actually sctetched up some city maps that I could use for this).

The hand-drawing could use some refinement, I agree Scanning it distorts it a bit as well, I don't quite know what the optimal settings for the scanner are.