Jan/Feb Lite Challenge Entry - "Brave New World"

[jbgibson]

Way to go- first post... With a map... As a contest entry. That level of willingness to participate I'd worth a bit of rep all by itself, so welcome, and have the smidgen I can bestow.

Two things about the map - first, what size is your original file? It's small enough to be showing pixelation. I know you're new at this, and expertise comes with trial and error; what you'll eventually get a feel for is how large a canvas you can start with, without bogging down your computer. Can't use "biggest starter file it will open", since it'll soon add way more complexity. At least if its too big to start, you can downsize pretty safely . You can hardly ever scale up.

And scale is at the root of your second issue. The little city profiles make great city markers, but you seem to have resized them willy-nilly. That's left many looking much fuzzier than the rest of your symbology. It *is* possible to resize some symbols, but you then have to adjust their sharpness and detail to mesh with the rest of your map. Some symbols just can't be resized without ruining their look - for instance you would figure your in-character cartographer would have drawn with similarly-sized pens.

I like what you have going - corral your varying sharp/ blur characteristics and it'll get more believable as a handmade artifact.

The cloud's not bad. The wind-whoosh is awfully pixelated - maybe a tensy bit of blur applied to just it, or redo with antialiased linework?