The World of Myrn - Mapping attempt

[Alturax]

Hello there, I've decided to make a map for my long-in-the-making fantasy Universe.
So, after grabbing a bunch of cutouts from Google Maps, I came up with a decent land shape. I used the Saderan Tutorial by Tear, linked below:

http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=8086

Three days of work later, I've come up with something satisfactory. A few twists and turns on the tutorial, and this is it. I haven't finished the Ocean yet, and I need to add city/location names.
Criticism is welcome!

[Chick]

Hello Alturax, welcome to the Guild!

That looks like a really nice start! Your coastlines are good, the rivers are in the right places, and the mountains are in ranges Nice colors so far.

I'd suggest a very dark unsaturated blue with some grunge layers on it for the ocean. You also might want to try an outer glow on the land to make a lighter shallows in the ocean.

Don't forget to leave room for a compass, scale, title, legend, neatline and border. Your map shouldn't go all the way to the edge of the paper. I'll look forward to seeing this with a nice ocean and some map decorations.

[Alturax]

Update:

Not feeling satisfied with the grass coverage/areas, I redid a few of them, adding in new details. I then decided to redo the basic Hills layer, which was a quick cloud filter on the Hide All layer mask on a solid color layer (Provided the solid colour layer has a Bevel&Emboss layer-style) For the grass, basically I made a green layer, then i used a "Hide All" layer mask, and painted with white soft brushes. In the end, I used a "Paint Daubs" filter (avaliable in the Filter Gallery on Photoshop) to give it a smoother feel:



@Chick - Thanks for the welcome! I'm glad I got that stuff right before I painted in the details and terrain, else I'd have alot of work to redo it all. As for the Oceans, I'l take that advice to heart! Thanks! Regarding the size, space and whatnot, If its necessary I'l move some stuff around to make room for Legend etc. I've even added a mini-legend so I don't forget stuff.

[Alturax]

Update:

Added a sort of Ocean I felt pretty happy with. Added deep areas and hand-drawn continental shelf. Redid the relief on the terrain because it was a bit too faded.

[Chick]

Nice job so far. I suggest you try darkening the ocean a lot ... like 50% darker and more unsaturated ... try several variations and render each one, then compare them side by side until you see which you like the best. Also try a slightly lighter Outer Glow on the land to make the water look shallower at the shorelines.

This map is an example of what I'm trying to describe: http://www.cartographersguild.com/al...chmentid=76649

Once you have the color you like best, then grunge up the ocean or give it some texture

[Alturax]

Update:

Tried using a desaturated Ocean, yet I found a lot of issues with it, mainly thought it was affecting the overall semi-vibrant colour scheme I was going for.
The grunge texture proved to be the smartest choice, however! Thank you for that!.



Then I even added a very slight texture on the land with the same Grungy feel, so it felt a little more connected. Also expanded canvas size a bit to add Legend/Compass rose. Overall thoughts so far? (Also added a pattern layer with blendmode set to Difference, to darken the colours and fiddle with the saturation)

[Chick]

That's really shaping up nice now!! As for saturation level, it's totally your preference, I just wanted to suggest experimenting enough to see what really is your preference

The grungy ocean really looks great, and the shallows are perfect!

[Alturax]

Update:

New stuff! Added forests, hopefully they wont interfere with my desired scale, but that remains to be seen.

[Diamond]

Really great work so far; the color balance between the oceans and land and shallows works very well. What's the scale of this? I feel like there ought to be more rivers, but if these are islands I guess that's about right.

[J.Edward]

I agree. This is looking splendid Alturax.