WIP - The World of Ascadia

[Karro]

My first thoughts are roughly the same as Joe's.

I think the reefs show themselves well in the wavey outlines, and the + signs aren't needed, and take away from the artsy-ness of the map. Just leave the wave outline, and I think we'll get the idea!

When I was younger, I like stippling to represent deserts. Here, I'm not sure it works, but I'm also not sure a dune-look would look any better. Maybe try what Joe suggested (a combined look) but otherwise, I think it's probably as good as it gets.

[torstan]

I like the new sea mask. Close up the vertical jitter on the waves is a bit large and makes them look very spiky, but this gives a great look zoomed out a little, where this just gives them a bit of fuzz.

I'm not too keen on the plus signs, but I'm lost on how to depict reefs. Maybe a line with cross bars on it at regular points and some smaller ripples? Right now the surrounding ripples give the reefs the same status as the coastlines. I'm not sure that's quite right.

As for the dunes, I like it. The stippling is a little black and hard for this map - it's the only thing I can see with an edge that hard. I'd blur it a (very) little. I'd also suggest spreading out the mask E-W to fit the iso view. Currently the pattern has the same dimensions NS as EW which doesn't quite look right.

Otherwise, coming along nicely. Looks good.

[torstan]

Some more thoughts on the dunes. I was wondering about this so I had a quick experiment. Here's the results:



This was done with a 3px fuzzy brush with a spacing of 200 and a jitter of 1. I liked the stippled dunes personally (the second one).

[Ascension]

To me the stipple looks like a steppe or tundra region...just me tho. I like that stippled dune idea.