Worldbuiding Project - Worldmap

[Paramenides]

Hrm. Not much feedback huh. :c Anyway mussed around with a few different tutorials, namely Tear's Saderan tutorial and Pasis' mountains tutorial. I still am never sure if the mountains look okay. Had a couple of issues with the rivers and I'm not sure if the forests are really to scale. I wanted a few massive forests, namely the one on top of Creid and the one on Ch'asvla. So I basically finished it aside from labeling things like cities (mostly because I don't have the names of all of them yet.) I also don't quite have countries separated and mapped out yet, though I'm starting with an enlarged map of Creid, which is the mainly populated continent. Decided on a brownish tone for the map as well, and some pretty weak map artistry, mostly because my arm is injured.

The continental/regional maps will be done in a hand drawn style rather than this style. Mostly because I feel I can get better landmarks in, what with this world having a floating set of mountains somewhere. (Not depicted in this map)

[Gidde]

It happens sometimes (the lack of feedback). This is coming along nicely! I really like the sepia-tone.

[octopod]

This looks awesome! Amazing detail.

I feel like the coastlines are a little bit too low-contrast compared to the darkest points in the text.

[arsheesh]

This looks really good. I like the muted two-tone look.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Paramenides]

@octopod
Thanks for the feedback. I'll change that up so that the coastlines are a bit darker.

@arsheesh
I like it too. I mean, I also like the colored version I have as well, and the way I color the ocean makes it look kind of bright and tropical, but I'm not sure if that's entirely the feel I'm going for on this map.

[Hai-Etlik]

Judging by your graticule and aspect ratio, this is meant to be Plate Carree. However you seem to be using a 9° graticule, which is, odd, though a fantasy culture might conceivably use it. You also seem to have cut off a degree or two around the edges.

The compass rose really isn't appropriate in the Plate Carree projection as it distorts compass bearings considerably and a compass rose is an indicator that bearings are preserved in the map (It's not just a pretty decoration, it's a functional element like a scale bar). Also your rose is strangely inconsistent as there are what look like they are meant to be evenly spaced bearing marks, but they are unevenly distributed between the octants. Some have 4, and some have 5. Also the 45° arms are sort of skewed, which looks pretty but which distorts the perception of direction, which is the whole reasons for a compass rose.

You also have some distortion around the poles. Plate Carree stretches things out as you get closer to the poles, so if you draw things without that stretching, it means that on the globe, you are drawing them as all pinched in toward the poles. Here are Stereographic projections of the poles to show the effect. (In these projections the poles look about right, while as you move away from the centre, things get bigger and bigger, but stay about the right shape.)



The map as a whole have very low contrast which makes it hard to read. The labels seem a bit out of place too. You want them to contrast with the map features so you can read them without distracting from those same features. Flat plain colours, are best. If "Creid" is supposed to be different in some way from the others, you should probably go with something more noticable than the slight size increase of the label, or provide a legend. Otherwise it's better to be consistent and make it the same size. If you need to spread a label out over a feature, it's best to adjust the spacing rather than the size, and you might want to run it along a path too.

Sorry if that came across as a lot of criticism but I do hope it helps you.

[Paramenides]

Thank you, and no, I really do appreciate the criticism. I'm pretty new to the whole mapmaking thing. On top of which, I don't know much at all about projections and how to do them properly. I especially don't know how to switch between projections either, since I'm doing these in photoshop, and I'm not quite sure how to stretch things in that program. I do agree though that the map is fairly low contrast, and I do really need to fix that. It's mostly the color filters that I've thrown on over the top, so I should probably either take those off or tone down the opacity a bit, as well as darken the coastlines, or make them a bit more pronounced. As for the compass, I pretty much just used a brush that I found on photoshop. I'm currently being sort of retarded in that I'm doing drawing sorts of things while I'm dealing with arm pain that's been acting up. I do thank you for the advice though, I just get really confused by projections.

EDIT: Also, just found the polar coordinates filter. Derp.