Redesign of world map...

[The-Somberlain]

I am also testing some drawing techniques before beginning to actually redesign the continent. What do you think?

[Badger]

Very nice mountains... great trees too... FR atlas forests are what they remind me of... but I would try a different style forest with that style of mountain ... not sure what ... but I would experiment a little...

[The-Somberlain]

delgondahntelius, I'll give it a shot and experiment a little bit more with the trees.

Here is the new outline of the continent and a scale to give you information about the size. I estimated that the continent is about 5000 miles from the west-most to the east-most point and 2500 miles from the north-most to the south-most point.

Do you see anything that sticks out as unnatural or unnecessary? Would you change something? I will now proceed and add the major islands. After that should I go with the mountains or the rivers?

[The-Somberlain]

OK, another update.

I added some islands and I tried to create a portion filled with small islands close together. It is an area of special interest.

Please tell me what you think, if anything is misplaced or wrong, etc.

[Midgardsormr]

Give some thought to what caused those islands to form. An archipelago like that is probably similar in history to the Phillippines. Take a look at the distribution of those real-world islands (try Google Maps in satellite view mode). Notice that they tend to form chains--they're the peaks of an undersea mountain range. I think I'd expect to see a chain of large islands running southward from that big peninsula, possibly forming a rim over to that other peninsula to the west. The smaller islands would have formed between and around the larger ones.

To your question about which to do first: rivers or mountains. It's generally better to do the mountains first, because that will largely determine where your rivers should go. If you have a river that needs to be in a particular place, then you can put that down first and figure out where the mountains need to go to make it happen later.

[Badger]

Ya... it is generally a good idea to think of how they formed like Mid said... Volcanic activity, plate techtonics play a large 'natural' effect on how islands are formed... as well as glacial activity (look at a map of norway and finland http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ie...,11.359863&z=7... those islands have a different look than those in the phillipines http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ie...6,2.839966&z=9 because they were formed in a different fashion.

Also.. you could meteor impacts as well as magical reasons that islands formed... in my homebrew world... the barbarian islands were formed because of an ancient magical catastrophe and the main land being destroyed and partially sunk....

and yes. You should start with Mountains then Rivers... as mid said.. they generally determine the flow and (starting point) of rivers....

[The-Somberlain]

OK! After some (or a lot, I can't actually recall ) hours of work, here it is. The all new map of the continent of Khalkish.

This is based on Ascension's tutorial (major-mega-thanks!) with some tweaks that suited me better.

So, comments as always welcome...