The Land of Tereden

[LeonaWindrider]

Hi! After introducing myself, I had to come here to show off my map of the Land of Tereden, which was made for my husband's fantasy novel series. Originally hand-drawn, the final line art was done in Photoshop, as was the rest of the map.

If anyone has any constructive critiques, I'd love to hear them -- I'm really interested in improving in this field!

Thank you for taking a look
~Leona

[Torq]

Great map Leona. I really love the style and the feel of it, authentic and ancient and yet at the same time clear and communicative.

There is a place called "Wynberg" in the top centre of the map. Thats weird, its also the name of the suburb in which I live.

Well done again.

Torq

[Jexl]

I also like the feel of the map. It's simplicity speaks for itself with calm colors.

The only critique I personally have, is the actual symbols for the cities and capital cities. I always liked to just have a dot to show for it.

I find that little pictures of cities like this throws the scale of the map off a little bit.

Again, this is the only critique I have, and it is speaking from a personal preference.

This is indeed a great map!

[ravells]

Here are my thoughts (in no particular order):

I love the texture of the map - it almost seems to glow. I also love the individual mountain symbols. The font choice, size, placement and orientation (except for Amber Valley - not sure why it's at an angle) really works for me as well. I like your convention of naming cities and towns in all caps and terrain features in upper and lowercase.

A scale bar might be useful (although if this is accompanying a book, distance information might become apparent from reading the book itself)

Do the mountains, forests and rivers symbols need an explanation in the legend? In fact the only symbol which I don't understand (maybe they're fields or steppes) are the large cross hatches above the text for the Southvale Expanse. The symbols in the Westwood Wastelands and Amber Valley also don't appear in the legend. I'd suggest either putting all or none of the symbols in the key.

We've recently been having a chat about rivers on this thread and this thread . Worth having a read but the potted version is that rivers don't (or very rarely) fork, instead they merge. This needs to balanced against the fact that it's a fantasy map and weird things happen in fantasy worlds. That led onto a wider discussion on the extent to which fantasy terrain should follow natural laws. Nonetheless the rivers in the map do some extremely funky things - there's one (Moroth river) which cuts across the entire continent and has a triple fork in the middle.

Anyway all these are tiny points on what is a lovely, visually pleasing map. Great work!

Ravs

[The Cartographist]

LeonaWindrider - Welcome to the Guild. I, too, really like your map. While I definitely understand your desire to improve, this map, right now, is as good as some I've seen in published works.

[Eilathen]

I really like the style as well. But i second what ravells said: a scale bar would be nice.

I am not very fond of the shape, the form of your continent? Island? It just seems a bit bland to me. But then, that is always a matter of taste.

Oh and last but not least: Great to have you here on CG

[rlucci]

I love this map. Lots of style!

I wasn't sure what the deal was with the faint radial lines under Eve Forest. Was that just an effect to grunge up the map?