Fantasy map. Problem regarding rivers...

[rapatuan]

Hello,

I'm workin on a fantasy map using techniques learnt mainly from Pasis and Ascension's tutorials, and although I'm fairly happy with how it's coming together, I have one important concern: river rules violation.

This is a commision, and the client brought a map with some inconsistencies, mainly relating to rivers: Rivers that finish in a lake rather than on the sea, rivers that flow uphill, rivers that divide rather than join, rivers that end nowhere... the usual as you see. I spoke with the client and we both agreed to make some changes to avoid those flaws, but he insists on keeping with rivers that doesn't end on the sea and justifying it by saying that they go underground... I can live with that, and to stay on common ground, I was thinking of drawing some features on land to show the underground course of the river.

There's no much more I can do about it, but wanted to share my frustation just to alleviate its weight.

As for the map itself, the base map was done by the client using Autorealm, then I added some textures in PS, an underwater texture was made inspired by Ascension atlas style tutorial and mountains and forests were done a-la-pasis. I made my own forest texture, because I found pasis' one to be lacking on resolution but used his mountain texture together with some others downloaded from CGtextures. I then applied shadows, just like I were shading a miniature with ink, using a soft brush at 50% opacity.