D&D World Map - Continent of Shaara - 'hand-drawn'

[Cyx]

Hey guys,

So during my reading break I'm finally taking the time to start up a D&D campaign, and I wanted to make some maps. You can find my first attempt here which was alright, it's honestly still a WIP because I decided I wanted to give my players something more hand-drawn-looking for my main campaign materials so I started this instead.

Without further ado, I present to you: the continent of Shaara.



So, obviously I didn't actually hand-draw it - I made it in Photoshop ^^ but I tried my best to make it look like someone drew it, a long time ago. Let me know what you think! Some things in particular I'm wondering about:

Does the blue for the oceans make sense? I wanted it to look kind of like it used to be blue and then it faded a lot but I'm not sure it wouldn't be better in just the dark brown, with no blue. The blue is really pretty though... maybe I should make it more blue? I dunno. I'm going to bed right now but if anyone wants to take a look at what it's like with brown ocean I can do that tomorrow.

How about the border? I ended up liking it more than I did when I originally started with that kind of pattern - I had more detail in it originally but it looked like too much of a cluster. Also, I think I overdid the 'pen lines' effect - I did it less on the scale than I did on the border and I think I like the scale better but I'm not really sure any more. I've been looking at it for a long time.

Also, I wish I'd drawn more mountains instead of reusing the same like 7 or 8. But I guess I'll survive.

Also, what can I use to fill that big empty space in the bottom left? It looks pretty flat but I don't know whether to put like a little picture or a legend or something... suggestions?

[rvgriffiths]

It's very pretty! I love immersive stuff like this when gaming, it's so cool you chose to do that for your campaign.

I think if you're going to do a faded-look with the oceans, it might look better (and by that I mean "more accurate") if it was a more random fade... not just around the continents. When I've seen color faded on older documents, or even more recent things, it's affected by things like where the paper was folded, where (/if) the sun hit it, things being set on or near it... that kind of thing.

Definitely a cool map!

[SJS]

I like the brown/orange color you put in the deeper ocean areas. Also a very interesting border.

[BlakEagle]

I think it looks really cool!

[Cyx]

Hey, thanks for the comments guys! I'm pretty happy with how this turned out overall, it's printed and sitting on my gaming table for my players to enjoy =) I'm now working on something showing specifically the country of Kul Sephyrn in the southeast since that's where my players decided they wanted to start out, I'll do something a bit more WIP-y for that one so I can get some feedback while I'm actually working on it.