Pax Orbis: Super ugly, but I'd love feedback!

[Morgan_R]

Thanks! I reworked some things a little:

[kestrelgrey]

This looks brilliant. The plans you originally posted were pretty basic (well, they were plans, so that was the best thing ^.^), and to see such a fantastic realization of those plans is amazing. You've really done an excellent job. Nitpicky detail? might want to clean up the way the rivers run into the ocean. They're darker, like the deep water, but they're running into the lighter blue and just sort of end. Overall, tho'? I can't wait to see more. This is beautifully done. I love the realistic feel (and look!), especially in the mountains. They're the hardest, for me, and you've done them beautifully. Everything looks very natural.

[Lyandra]

Great map! I agree with kestrelgrey: excellent realization of your plans. I too have to finally make something following Arsheesh's excellent Eriond Tutorial - I love this style and the maps made using it look really awesome! The rivers do look a bit odd ending suddenly like this. If I were you I would also make the change between different hues of blue more gradual.

[Morgan_R]

D'oh, my bad... the rivers matched the ocean they flowed into until I added some lighter water around the edges. Thanks for pointing that out, I'll fix it for the next iteration.

kestralgray: The mountains were definitely the hardest part. I definitely recommend the Eriond tutorial, but also, I generated the mountain noise multiple times to get sections I liked. I also found duplicating & gaussian blurring them helped blend them into the map. And for the bump map on the second version, I maxed out 'elevation' and then set 'depth' to something that looked good. I can't really explain the difference, but I think it came out better that way.

[arsheesh]

Ooh, those mountains turned out nicely on your re-worked map Morgan. That and the rivers look much clearer and more natural. Nicely done!

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Morgan_R]

Thanks! I actually ended up just using the old rivers as guidelines, drawing paths in GIMP and then using RobA's fractalize path script. I wanted to have them in path form in case I end up doing some larger-scale maps.

So, the latest iteration, now with some (possibly temporary) names...


I like the all-caps font, but I'm less thrilled about the look of the cities... any advice on how to improve them, before I add a dozen more? ;P

[leen]

Hey!
This is great! The rivers and mountains look very neat!!
The font for the terrain is good, but the Citynames are way too bold, i think... search for something fine, light, for the cities may be just a simple outline-dot, nothing too fancy...
keep it coming!
Cheers

[arsheesh]

Thanks! I actually ended up just using the old rivers as guidelines, drawing paths in GIMP and then using RobA's fractalize path script. I wanted to have them in path form in case I end up doing some larger-scale maps.

So, the latest iteration, now with some (possibly temporary) names... I like the all-caps font, but I'm less thrilled about the look of the cities... any advice on how to improve them, before I add a dozen more? ;P

Aw, very clever idea with the rivers. I like the font. Yes the city icons are a bit lackluster. That and as leen mentioned, the white stroke surrounding the city names is a bit thick. I would try reducing the stroke to about 1/2 the current thickness. As to the Icons, well there are allot of different things you could do. By way of example, here is a sampling of some of the icons I've created for maps over the last couple of years:



While some of the more ornate icons took a bit more work most of these were just a matter of finding the right shape, applying a bevel and emboss (play around with the settings a bit till you find something you like) and then a drop shadow. GIMP doesn't come with layer styles built in by there is a plugin that you can get that allows you to approximate this, which you can find here.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Morgan_R]

Thanks Arsheesh, that was super helpful.

Here's the new-and-hopefully-improved version, now with borders: