Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 10 of 16

Thread: My first real Map

  1. #1
    Guild Novice
    Join Date
    Jan 2011
    Location
    Zurich, Switzerland
    Posts
    6

    Wip My first real Map

    Hello everybody!

    I've been following the forums for quite some time now, reading tutorials, admiring other people's maps and drawing maps of my own.
    Now I think the moment has come to show my most advanced mapping project to date, this map right here:

    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	final_terrain_labels_small.jpg 
Views:	637 
Size:	3.41 MB 
ID:	33149

    This is about the 8th version of a map/worldbuilding project I've pursued for the last 4 years. As the world evolved in my head and my notes the map began to expand and shift shapes, forcing me to redesign it at least 50 times. Finally I got over myself and decided to let Fractal Terrains draw the coastline, 'cause I an just incapable of doing really realistic landmasses. Now I think I found the right shape and size to incorporate all the numerous ideas I've got for the world I'm building, which I intend to use for a fantasy novel some time.

    It's a high fantasy world with a very noir touch to it, meaning it's all grand in scope but very human and realistic in the details. I'm trying to let that reflect in my maps. There are three main empires/kingdoms:
    - The Enorian Empire (Roman/Qin Chinese-inspired great empire, a mix of antiquity and the renaissance with a touch of chinese high culture. (Yeah, sounds weird I know))
    - Sierme (A Spanish/English-influenced kingdom, very medieval)
    - Yankesh, a floodplain/jungle society inspired by India and Mesopotamia).

    These principal powers are surrounded by feudal states (Lankaia, Tsarist Russia-inspired), city aristocracies and republics (Nisen coast, Valletia), Tribal societies (Timurien, Njordar, Pyrai) and a desert culture in the southeast corner.

    Would be great if someone could look at it, especially from a geological/climatological point of view, and tell me where I could improve my work.
    Thanks a lot in advance and please excuse my writing style, It's late already

  2. #2
    Community Leader Facebook Connected Ascension's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2008
    Location
    St. Charles, Missouri, United States
    Posts
    8,392

    Default

    I'd change the blue to something a bit lighter but otherwise I think it looks darn nice so far.
    If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
    -J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)


    My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps

  3. #3
    Community Leader Guild Sponsor Gidde's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2009
    Location
    Michigan, USA
    Posts
    3,673

    Default

    Agreed, the blue is VERY vivid, but other than that it's looking good

  4. #4

    Default

    You might do something to punch up the contrast of the mountain texture. The rivers and coastlines are so clearly delineated that it seems a bit odd for that texture to be so washed out. Of course, you don't want to do anything to disturb the legibility of the labels.

    It looks like there might be one river flowing uphill. It comes down out of the Frostwall mountains, passes through a city called Aereth, and then goes through a mountain pass on its way to the sea. I'm not sure what that greyish color represents, but if it's an indication of height, then the river cannot climb up to go through that pass. It would more likely divert down to that lake to the south.

    Also, on the topic of rivers, they tend to be straighter near their source and start to meander as they reach the lowlands. Your rivers are currently a little too straight, I think. Of course, getting a realistic-looking river path is about as difficult as getting good coastlines, so don't fret too much about that.
    Bryan Ray, visual effects artist
    http://www.bryanray.name

  5. #5
    Guild Expert jbgibson's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2009
    Location
    Alabama, USA
    Posts
    1,429

    Default

    I might desaturate the ocean some, like the others noted. Just a thought about getting rivers to behave believably - you're doing okay at wiggling some curves into place, but a way to express what Midgardsormr notes might be the scale is partly off. Try doing your wiggles while zoomed in progressively more and more as you draw your way downstream. That could make "random one-inch hand movement" trace progressively tighter and tighter curves, like a mature river in flatlands developing loops and swirls.

  6. #6
    Guild Novice
    Join Date
    Jan 2011
    Location
    Zurich, Switzerland
    Posts
    6

    Default

    Thank you all for the tips and suggestions!

    I'll try to play around some with the colour of the water, hope I can get something a little less vivid...

    As to the rivers, those are still little more than sketches, done with the "path" tool in PS, i wanted to work on them but then got carried away naming stuff :-)
    And I just realized that it really looks like the river up north flows across a mountain range, but that's just flat tundra there. But I'll tweak the colours a little to make that clearer.

    Another question which arose when I took another look at the place names, what's your opinion on those? I am quite satisfied with the made-up ones, but the english names started to seem a little weird when I thought about them again. Has anyone got any good tips on naming places?

    @jbgibson: I'm not sure whether I completely understand your suggestion on how to do the rivers, would you mind to elaborate on that?

    @midgardsormr: interesting obeservation about the mountain texture, have you got an idea on how to improve that? cause i never really liked it but everything i tried made it worse, so i decided to leave it at that.

  7. #7
    Guild Expert Eilathen's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Location
    Kurald Liosan
    Posts
    1,334

    Default

    Very nice map. I really like the form of your landmass. And your ideas for the setting sound interesting.

    And...you're from Zurich? Cool stuff. I live near Zurich as well. And am a hobby-ish writer myself Are you by any chance also into p&p rpgs? That would open up a lot of interesting possibilities.

    Cheers
    Eilathen
    I'm trapped in Darkness,
    Still I reach out for the Stars

  8. #8
    Guild Expert jbgibson's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2009
    Location
    Alabama, USA
    Posts
    1,429

    Default

    A river-technique that might work: assume you're working on the map at 200% zoom. Start drawing a wiggly river up in some mountain area. A given random twitch of your hand when drawing the path might be a couple of centimeters to one side. Call that a 100-km curve. As you get further downstream, zoom in to 300%. Now the same twitch will be just a 67km curve - a tighter loop. Then zoom in 400%, 500%, and so on, automatically producing somewhat "wigglier" river path as you zoom. There's a limit - most small scale (large area) maps will have to have some generalization ... a true depiction of *every* curve would get down into tweaking single pixels!

    At your initial zoom, you probably *couldn't* draw a believable lower-river loop or oxbow. Such detail would require precise hand movements of a millimeter or less, and the small curves you managed to produce would be uneven. Zoomed in, such would be easier to make. Even nearing a river's mouth there'll still be large-extent curves, it's just those sweeping wanders will be overlaid with little loops. A way to get the 100-km wanders even far downriver is maybe to use your present paths as just guidelines. Draw your "real" path as wiggles superimposed on the rough path. Go to Google maps and follow a given river from source to ocean, and you'll get an idea of the progression.

    This is a generality - sure, different rivers have different degrees of curvature. And really, if you zoomed WAY in on a creek's headwaters, you might see even more chaotic paths, as tiny watercourses avoided each hill and ridge. But at a continental scale, that doesn't show. But if you put in at least some of the progression from less curvy to downright loopy, your rivers will suddenly snap into "believable".

    The names are okay. Only the worldbuilder can say what languages have lent names to this or that feature. You *can* automatically convey a sense of patches of different cultures, just by modeling different areas' names on different earthly cultures. At the same time, you can convey that an area has hosted multiple people groups just by purposefully mingling name types. You ought to not overlay the big names (Enorian Empire, Midlands) over the city and town names.

    Say your cartographer or your focal nation speaks English, or something like it. It's perfectly natural for him to use *his* countrymen's names for familiar features, even if the "locals" would have their own quite different names. My map of your home would almost certainly term your neighbors Germany and Austria. Yours might label them Deutschland and Osterreich, yes? There's room for grand confusion in a world of nonstandard names, but complexity can build into your world a richness that would be lacking if your cartographer stubbornly Anglicized (or Enorianated) all the labels :-).

    When labeling, it's best to distinguish between types of features, whether by font, size, text color, or whatnot. For example, I can't tell if Midlands is a land type, region, a nation, or a subnational political unit of the Enorian Empire. Ravells posted a really good paper he found on name positioning - there's a link to it in his signature.

    I do like your map - it has a lot going for it. It's worth further refining.

  9. #9
    Guild Novice
    Join Date
    Jan 2011
    Location
    Zurich, Switzerland
    Posts
    6

    Default

    @eilathen: Thanks! You're from Zurich? Really? Amazing coincidence! Where from exactly? I'm from Wädenswil, but working in Zurich. I got into p&p a little through my sister and some freinds of hers, but I somehow never found enough time to play more frequently than every two months or so. My way into worldbuilding and fantasy was more by way of books, call it a hazard of the trade for a bookseller with delusions of creativity :-) May I ask what rpg you are into? My people are great fans of DSA...

    @jbgibson: Thanks a million, man, a boatload of fascinating ideas and suggestions! I'll give them a try as soon as I'm off work and on holiday. Concerning the names, I think I'll find a good explanation for the language-mix in certain regions, and of course the map's been drawn by some arrogant Enorian cartographer, so some language bias is justified, I think. :-)

    I'll post some updated version some time next week, as soon as I return from my vacation in the bone-freezingly cold mountains

  10. #10
    Guild Expert Eilathen's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Location
    Kurald Liosan
    Posts
    1,334

    Default

    tairon,

    Wanted to send this to you via PM, but you can not receive it yet (or maybe you disabled it). So here goes (in short version ^^ ):
    I am into a lot of rpgs, to be honest. I could talk hours about the different kinds i like (yes, I am a geek ). But maybe I'll send you a PM sometime or maybe you're up for a beer sometimes in Zürich? Btw, do you speak german (or swissgerman)?
    How about taking up some rpging again? I mean seriously, if the concept interests you, there is no better worlddevelopment-process and inspiration then playing some fun games in your world. I can highly recommend it.

    But i promised to keep it short (as to not derail the thread). But I am up for more talk if you're interested.
    As a sidenote, I am also seriously addicted to fantasy-books... which ones do you like?

    Cheers
    Eilathen
    I'm trapped in Darkness,
    Still I reach out for the Stars

Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •