My Shannara Maps

[Th3AlleyCat]

Hi cartographers, I'm a Terry Brooks 's Shannara fan and here are 2 of my revisited versions of the maps:

The Four Lands

and The Eastlands

I'm waiting for your opinion/critique!!

[Chick]

Very nice!

My only critique would be that the snow-capped mountains are in the wrong places. Mountains have snow for one of two reasons ... far north (all mts have the snow), or very tall (the tallest have the snow). Yours have low mountains with snow among taller ones without, and they are mixed in to temperate climate areas.

And by the way, welcome to the Guild!!

[xpian]

Welcome to the guild. These maps are a good beginning effort.

@chick is right about the snowcaps - they are quite distracting when situated next to bare mountains that are clearly taller.

I'm not a member of the River Police--not yet, anyway--but they're going to flag you for multiple violations, especially on the "Four Lands" map. You must always try to have a clear direction of flow when laying down your rivers. They go from highlands to lowlands to the sea. Always. Rivers that start in mountains and end in the ocean are quite common. Some end their lives in inland seas, like the Caspian or Aral seas on Earth, where the excess water simply evaporates over time.

But in the map above, you've got rivers going, essentially, in circles. Only M. C. Escher can make water do that. The only time a river forks when heading downstream is at a delta, where the body of water it's flowing into "backs up" the river and forces it to find multiple channels. Otherwise, rivers just combine and combine, flowing into a bigger and bigger single stream.

[tolcreator]

The problem here is, the original sin (for the rivers) was on Terry Brooks: His maps had the bad rivers. So if you want to draw a Shanara map, you either accept the magic rivers and go with it, or change the map to have realistic rivers.

[Th3AlleyCat]

Thanks to anyone who commented!
@chick you're totally right about the snowcaps. I'll pay more attention on that !!!
@xpian you' right too...but rivers are "strange" on Terry Brooks maps, as @tolcreator said.
I've taken outline and rivers from the original maps so....
Btw I''ll take care of all the really usefull advices. Bye \o/

[jbgibson]

Yeah, when I see wonky rivers that're already part of some established canon, I rationalize to myself "Hmm - must be some of those connecting sections are canals. Yeah, that's it - canals"... :-). I missed these when you first posted - I'd have given you a smidgen of rep just for being so bold as to post maps in your intro post (wasn't this your first post?), and ones that look nice as well. Bravo, and a belated welcome!