My first map - Dragonfall Peninsula

[tomoraider]

Hi, everyone! I found this website today while I was searching for some tutorials on map making and absolutely loved it! The tutorials here are great (even though I didn't use them for this map, as I already finished most of it by then) and the community seems really nice as well. I thought I'd register and share the map I made in Photoshop.

This map is for my own custom fantasy world I'm making. I plan to later make it into a Warcraft 3 campaign, so I will probably do even more maps. I didn't actually use many tutorials for this map, I mainly just used the brushes I found on deviantart and then just kept doing other things myself until it felt right. I kind of tried to base it on the maps from World of Warcraft and though it didn't really work out, I really like how it turned out in the end.

Anyway, would love some input on it!

I'm planning to do a city map next, so I have a question, is there any tutorial here on how to do a city map from a scratch? I tried searching, but couldn't really find one.

Thanks in advance!

[Ghostman]

That is a fairly beautiful map. The mountains are especially good looking. The coastlines for the lakes, as well as the edges of the rivers appear to be rough though, lacking the smoothness of the sea coastline. The rivers are also running unnaturally straight; they should meander more heavily across the land.

[Chick]

That is a fabulous map for a first post! You have done a super job of blending the photoshop brushwork into the base terrain.

Look around through the Gallery here, and see how coastlines are made to look more realistic (fractal). Even so, you did a good job of not just drawing a circular coastline, so it won't take much for you to get that down well.

Your mountains and rivers are placed naturally, although I agree with Ghostman that they need to wind around a bit.

There are plenty of tutorials on drawing towns/cities, including a superb one by Lerb (if you search by his name, you'll find it) for overall getting started.

Welcome to the Guild! I'm sure I'm going to enjoy seeing more of your work!!

[tomoraider]

Glad you like it!

Thanks for the suggestions as well. I actually kind of like how the coastline looks now, but I will take a look on how to make it look more like you suggested. I do agree about rivers though, they don't really look that well. I couldn't really make rivers and lakes as good for some reason, I'll need to work on that.

Also, that tutorial you suggested is exactly what I need! Thank you!