The Free Lands - GIMP - WIP

[holyhalo]

It's been a while since I've posted anything here but I've picked cartography up again and here I am again. I was working on a map for a part of a world and I found myself stuck with the naming. I have all the names but I don't know where to place anything. Or which colors to use for the names. Or what font to use (I don't want to go too spikey medieval.) I'm also having some trouble depicting areas of interest like cities, ruins and dungeons or places of interest. The map is 1500x1500 in size.



Below the mountains are the Cold Plains. In the middle is the dark forest and to the West is the crawling swamp. In the south are the Thunder hills and near the border the Great Savannah. To the North West lies Cassina, a different country. In the South East is uninhabited land. Both were taken out to show the focus of the map more.

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I'll keep a record of the different steps in the spoiler below for interested parties.

 

Combined various parts of Earth into the map. There's some Siberian plains in there, some Canadian forests, some USA mountains and some African savanna's.


Bumped the Dark Forest in the middle of the map with some trees. Added the country borders where they belong.


Bumped the mountain with an image of itself. A little dark in places but I'm not unhappy about the result.


Did the same for the hills in the south between the border and the forest. A very minor bump, not very visible but I know it's there, which makes it better for me. Also, unmasked some sparingly spread out trees and minor forests throughout the Free Lands.

[ascanius]

I like what you have so far but I think the central area of the dark forest is having an unintended affect. Right now with how dark that central region is it looks more like a depression or an area in an unexplainable shadow. You might want to make it as light as the areas around it, more or less, but close and try playing with saturation. With the scale of the map showing a forest might not be the best idea.

As for your questions, try figuring out where your rivers are after that settelments and the rest will come more naturally.

[holyhalo]

Well, there is only one settlement on the whole map, so that is not a problem to place. It's placing the names that is the problem. I don't know where to place them or what color to use for them. I can't use white because you can't see it in the mountains and black will be hard to see in the swamp and the forest. And using two colors for names shouldn't be done.

[Chick]

Maybe something like this?

[holyhalo]

Something along those lines would be very nice. But those only show the main parts of the map. For example, the area next to the 'The Sea' is called the Creeping swamp, so that would be the big white name, the first tier area. Where the swamp turns into the Sea is called the bandit coast, a second tier area. Along the bandit coast is the only city, Daggerend, which could be a second or third tier area and lastly there is a Point of interest along the coast called the Queen Mary, a fourth tier name. I'd like to see all of them on the map to show as much of the locations and areas as possible.

[Chick]

It was my intention to show you how, not to put on all the names for you I think you can do all the names you want, using this method:

1. White letters
2. Black stroke
3. Light-colored outer glow
4. Bigger or smaller font sizes for more or less important features

[holyhalo]

So, I tried it as you suggest. I kinda like it, although it feels a little stiff. Everything is so straight.
The black glowing names are locations of interest or camps/villages. The red ones are dungeons.


I made a second version as well, with some different colors for the surrounding countries according to their flag/crest. It's a bit too flashy imo but let me know what you guys think. I appreciate all the help so far.

[Chick]

I like the single color for all countries better. If you want to distinguish, maybe a crest or coat of arms would work better.

The red for the dungeons is a little harder to read. Red is an intense color that draws the eye strongly away from other colors, so that makes it harder to read the text, especially since it's small besides. Perhaps try a more subdued, desaturated (greyer) or lighter red, and make that text a bit bigger.

As for stiff/straight, just try some different fonts until you find one that looks good to you.

A definite improvement!

[holyhalo]

I don't have the crests for the countries so I will stick with the single color all around. I desaturated the red so it looks more like a redish black color rather than the flashy red from before. I think that works quite well. It doesn't draw the attention as much.

For the straight parts, I was more talking about how the text was written, all on straight lines. There isn't really a simple way to write text in a wave like fashion, for example the bandit coast would be written along the coast, moving up and down with the coast itself. I know you can use a path for that but I don't like the result. But the commisioner was happy with the result as is so here is the (hopefully) final version. Once again, if there's anything you'd like to add or suggest, go right ahead.