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Thread: Ethiedus WIP - Hitting some snags

  1. #1
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    Help Ethiedus WIP - Hitting some snags

    Hello everyone, this is my world of Ethiedus. I've scaled it down by half from the actual size. I've recently used two tutorials on this map, one for making mountains and one for making forests. I'm running into some snags with my water - specifically, where to put it, ESPECIALLY the rivers... ohhhh gods the rivers. :\ I made my first go at rivers and lakes invisible and started over, but this is as far as I have gotten and it's getting pretty frustrating, so I thought I would take a step back and see what kind of advice I could get here. I'm not sure I'm satisfied with the mountains I have, either... And the color of the land bugs me, I can't figure out a great way to color the land appropriately. So now it's kind of monochrome. I've been working hard on the map for several months, dedicating a few hours here and there along the way, and there are some things about it I love, but I think I'm hitting the limits of my current abilities! This is my first map making project, tied in to a novel I'm writing. The map is still very very WIP and I expect it'll look a lot different by the time I'm done. Help me figure out how to fix my issues please!

    Link to map

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    I did some underpainting on the forests today. Also I fixed a road going through a mountain... LOL oops.

    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	World Map working16-2.png 
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Size:	3.95 MB 
ID:	63163

  3. #3
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    Well, it's been almost a week with no bites :\ Anyone out there willing to help me improve my skills a bit? Any advice, comments, etc would be very much appreciated! Pretty please?

  4. #4

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    Do you have a higher resolution of your map? At this size, the smaller labels are very hard to read and it's difficult to emit an opinion. The only thing I could say right now is that I would probably do a lining around the lakes as you did for the coastlines.

  5. #5
    Guild Artisan Freodin's Avatar
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    A thread that might help with your rivers: http://www.cartographersguild.com/tu...ght-place.html Extremely helpful!

    As for the rest of your map: I think it is quite nice, but somehow it does not resonate with me. I cannot exactly explain why, but the placement of your land seems a little arbitrary to me.
    The style looks good in my view... I like the muted colour of the land as well as the forests. On the other hand, you said that this map is meant for a book. Perhaps some style that is printable in B&W might be better suited?

  6. #6
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    Ilanthar, yes, the working resolution is much much bigger, but I couldn't fit the full size image on the forums.

    Freodin, I can definitely see how the land placement might look kind of off. I drew in the major shapes on tracing paper originally, I've noticed that there are some more realistic looking ways to make land since joining the site so at some point I will probably go in and add some little details to make it look a shade more natural. This color version I intend to eventually, somewhere down the line, have printed on vinyl and hung up in my room. For printing in, like, the first few pages of my book, though (if all hopes and dreams come to fruition) I'll probably make a b&w version separate from this endeavor.

    Grateful for the responses! I'll keep your comments in mind.

  7. #7
    Guild Adept acrosome's Avatar
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    Lake Nyoma has two outlets. While not impossible, this is very unlikely. Such arrangements don't last long, geologically speaking- eventually one outlet erodes a bit more and "wins." (Or, it could just be one hell of a coincidence, or the result of magic, etc.)

    OTOH the river/lake system in central Aengvald has no outlet. Nor does the system on Vorenth. Nor Lake Pybo on Sereche. Did you intend for these to be endorrheic lakes? That would presume a drier climate, which your map doesn't resemble. If a river feeding a lake is large enough to be seen on the scale of the map, there should logically be one draining that same lake that is also big enough to be seen. Unless, as I mentioned, the lake is endorrheic for some reason.

    The routes of the rivers on the very skinny island of Galloway strike me as unlikely.

    That's a heck of a density of lakes, unless you're going for a look like the lake country surrounding Hudson Bay or your theorectocal geology otherwise explains it. (Most people put in too many lakes.)

    Yes, a scale would be helpful. Since we can only see a compressed version "six pixels to the mile" doesn't help us much...

    The only port that I see on the outer side of any islands is the one on Vorenth. Is there a reason for so few? Is there no outside trade?

    I do like the light ground coloration. It reminds me of the map of Central Alemnia that Daelin just posted, where the ground is bone colored. One hell of a map, that.

    I'd make the political boundaries a color other than black, so as not to confuse them with roads.

    Don't take my criticisms too sharply- I have certainly never posted a better map than yours...

  8. #8
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    Hey arcsome, thank you for the response! I've been messing with the map since then and it looks a little different now. I killed the river going through lake Nyoma because I'm just not sure how to work that. All the info on how to get your rivers in the right place makes me feel downright dumb, honestly. I keep going back and re-reading it, but I'm still having trouble. Maybe it works better on smaller maps... I am attempting a pretty ambitious sized map here. D'oh. Oh, and the bit about the scale - yeah, I had that in there from the beginning and it's a detail I meant to change and totally forgot was even there. I've seen some pretty, free scales in the mapping elements forum that I will eventually go and grab. I just want to get this water sorted! It's driving me mad! The ports are another detail that I haven't worked on in a while. I've added a lot of places since I first put in the ports, so going back and deciding where the new ports will be is something that's on the to-do list. I really do appreciate you taking the time to point some of this out for me. Here's an updated map... I'm honestly at my wits' end where water is concerned. I tried making an elevation layer to help decide where to place water, but it didn't work out so well. I re-did the mountains and the forests, added a bunch of islands (to help with the arbitrary land placement issue - I think it looks a little better now, anyway) and for now I've toggled off the text and legend layers so it won't look so cluttered. What are yalls thoughts on the current water markers? (Obviously they won't be that color and they'll have some more "wiggle" to them)
    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	World Map working18water.jpg 
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ID:	63528

  9. #9
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    I'm getting an error message on that image so let me try one more time.
    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	World Map working18water2.jpg 
Views:	97 
Size:	2.49 MB 
ID:	63530

  10. #10
    Guild Artisan Pixie's Avatar
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    I wouldn't mind giving you some help with river/lake placement, either. But there's two things one needs to know:

    - what's the scale of this map? Is it an Indonesia sized archipelago? A Japan sized one? Or something the size of a couple of caribbean islands?
    Even for your own guidance, I recommend figuring this out and then place an outline of that part of Earth over your map, as a layer.

    - where is this archipelago placed in the globe? Does it cross the equator? Is it entirely on the temperate region, and if so on the northern hemisphere or the southern hemisphere? Are there are very big landmasses nearby?

    This would make river placing both more accurate and much easier. Without this, it's too random to be fun (for me, that is )

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