WIP - Ethea

[kimni]

This is the map I'm currently working on.
I played around with the land shape for a long time, but I like the way it ended up.

Some feedback would be great (especially on the land shape and the mountain placement). I'm also not quite sure about the water... any opinions?

[kimni]

I meant to post my next version a while ago, but there was some chaos at university, and then I had no internet connection for a few days...
Anyway, I kept it pretty much as it was and added cities and roads and lables.

I was wondering... is there a faster way to add curved text (for the rivers, mostly) in GIMP than using paths? I haven't found anything in the tutorial section, and this way it takes ages.

[arsheesh]

Looking very nice so far Kimmi! I like the simple red icons. One suggestion I would make is to trace a thinner and sharper line around the the hills and mountains. As it stands they seem a bit fuzzy compared with the other elements.

As to curved labels, I'd recommend doing these in Inkscape. Much easier to manage that way. I've written up a quick tutorial on how to do this here (scroll to the bottom of the page).

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[kimni]

Thanks, I've never used Inkscape before, but I'll look into it.
I'm not sure how to make the mountains and hills less fuzzy, though... (they are drawn with pencil and then scanned, I made those a few years ago before I got a graphic tablet. The trees and icons are drawn with my tablet, so they aren't fuzzy...)

[kimni]

I tried to make the mountains and hills less blurry, but I don't think it looks any different than before...
I also added some more texture, and a colour layer, since the colours looked a bit drained to me.

With the legend, I think this is about finished... I might add a compass, but so far I haven't been happy with any design for a compass rose.

Any opinions?

[Eilathen]

A cool style you have there, kimni. The only thing that i think you could try is to make some more mountains in different shapes and then compose more varied mountain-chains. As it is now, the mountains are a bit monotonous.
Care to tell us a bit about this world? I'm always interested in worldbuilding.

[kimni]

Thanks!
I've wanted to make more mountains for a while, but I never found the time (which is weird, because it doesn't actually take that long to draw them...)

The world is the setting for a story that I might some day actually manage to write down. It's mostly pseudo-medieval european.
The region Ethea used to be home to a group of different cultures (a few centuries before the story is set). Then there was a war on the continent west of Ethea (its edge is on the map), and the people of the city Sania (also on the map, but as a ruin) fled across the sea and conquered some small areas along the west coast... and at some point, one of them decided the constant fights with his neighbours would end if he ruled over them. His descendants continued that, and eventually they ruled all of Ethea (this took centuries, and every time a regions was more or less conquered, the current king would give it to someone he trusted to rule, that's how the different regions on the map were made).
There's still conflicts, especially in the east (with the normadic people south-east, and the descendants of those the Sanians defeated, who live in the Lost Forest), so they constructed a line of forts and a barricade between them (something like the Hadrian's Wall or the limes the Romans built).

Culturally, Ethea is sort of split in two – the northern parts (Aerivael, Brecan and Halney) managed to mostly keep their own culture, while the other parts are mostly Sanian (except Ettany, which is somewhere in between the two). This is the reason there are no monasteries or fortresses held by the military arm of that religion (the ones in blue) in the northern regions, since that religion came with the Sanians.

I have more backstory on the different regions (some have more, some less), but it would take time to type it all out...