First attempt of map, but it looks kind of dull - now what?

[Triplicate]

Welcome!

The left continent looks rather like a seahorse. Was that intentional? Also, its "tail" appears to be a large crater with a central peak, but something looks wrong about that. Maybe it's too neat? Or that it's filled with land but surrounded by water, even though the floor of a crater is normally lower than the surrounding terrain?
EDIT: And the gap in the rim where it connects to the rest of the continent.

Also, the terrain coloration appears to have been applied ignoring coastlines, making the continents look like cutouts.

And what's the projection? The compass rose suggests a Mercator (straight lines radiating to show constant compass bearing), but the crater is at high latitudes, so if it's actually circular on a spherical world, it won't be circular on a Mercator.

[schattentanz]

Thanks for the reply

Yes, the continent's shape is intentional

The geography, too: Down under there is a jungle hidden in a ring of mountains. Seeing mountain ranges like e.g. the Andes on Earth, I can't see anything wrong with mountains next to water - or is there?

I've started a second attempt at a map, regarding a hint I read in another thread; something along the lines "if the coastlines are sharp, terrain should be sharp, too" .. So I took an eraser and eliminated the blurry parts of the mountains. Also I re-vamped the snow to be what I consider more "snowy" ..



Yet .. in my eyes, the mountains still look wrong ..
Also the ocean looks more like a bunch of clouds .. most propably, because it is a cloud-filter with a blue overlay .. anywhere a good tutorial on creating an ocean looking realistic?
And the whole rest is just .. featureless .. that's actually my biggest issue: what features could I add at this size besides more mountains / rivers?



I'm not sure, I understood the question about the projection correctly:
While the world is supposed to be round, the continents are depicted as if "flattened out", the white northern as well as the southern rim are the north and the south pole respectively ..
Anything wrong with that?



Thanks for reading/replying and kind regards,
Kai