WIP - Emprasir

[Jaxilon]

I can tell you we all feel your pain. I've crushed some maps myself by accident. Usually by somehow screwing up and turning psd into jpg and saving it. I have learned to create multiple copies of my work which takes up some drive space but better that than starting over.

Sorry for your stress but glad you were able to get thru it this time. Keep up the good work.

[Sarithus]

(not strictly related to this post )

Well, I'm back on track after that and having to do all sorts of annoying stuff to get the border actually mirrored. As you can see, the border and the faces are slightly blurrier than the mountains and the forest, but I'd rather have that than no map at all. I wasn't too happy with my mountains so I took the ones from my new saranai WIP map that didn't go anywhere and traced it with the new brush which took ages. You can see in the bottom right I did a little cliff, still not sure how I want to do the map itself and if I'll have it flat or not.

[Sarithus]

Having some issues with wetlands. I want to include either a swamp or a marsh, but there are some things I don't understand. Bare with me, this is probably really easy stuff for some people:

a. Can swamps and marshes be inland or are they found near the coast?
b. If they're inland, are they only near rivers?
c. Is a delta considered a wetland?
d. How can I portray swamp/marshes on a map other than it looking like a delta? (multiple streams branching off from a river)

I've quickly added some experiments to the map:
1. A way of drawing marshes, correct?
2. Another way of drawing marshes?
3. This I think would be a delta
4. I'm interested to know what this would be. I've seen it on some maps before. I'd imagine it's a coastal marsh or less likely a swamp.




Thanks.

[Chick]

Swamps, marshes, fens, bogs, etc, are all different forms of wetlands. A wetland can occur anywhere there is water and a low-lying region of land where it can pool. They do generally have a drainage outlet, into a river or lake or sea.

Deltas are something else. Deltas are actually the buildup of sediment that was carried there by a faster moving river that slows down as it reaches or nears the sea (occasionally a lake). The slowdown of the flow allows the sediment to drop to the bottom, where it builds up over time. This creates the delta. The delta is the sand and sediment, not the wetland.

A delta builds up initially under the water. When enough sediment is deposited to build up above the water, those piles of sediment fragment the river flow into what you see as multiple channels. Plants begin to grow on that exposed sediment, and a wetland forms.

You can portray a wetland using indications of the water, and of wetland flora such as scrubby trees, lots of waterplants, etc. Here is an example of how I did that (in the bottom right corner): http://www.cartographersguild.com/at...9&d=1413772906

There is a very nice tutorial on drawing swamps in greyscale here:
http://www.fantasticmaps.com/categor...tricks/page/2/

There is supposedly a bit of further into here: http://www.fantasticmaps.com/2013/03...o-draw-swamps/ but I couldn't get that page to load, not sure why.

[Sarithus]

Thanks for the post, Chick. I still feel like I need a bit more information to feel comfortable, though. My geography is incredibly weak so I really need people to point out some very simple stuff.

If someone has the time:

1. I'd still like an explanation of what 4 in my picture could be.
2. Is it more likely that a wetland will occur by a coast? From what I've seen so far, your map and on the tutorial have the wetland is by the sea. Middle Earth has the dead marshes inland.

I'll edit this post with more questions later as I'm about to try drawing one.

[Chick]

You might want to go and read about the Okefenokee Swamp. It's pretty much like what you are trying to describe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okefeno...ildlife_Refuge

By the way, don't think of Middle Earth as any kind of guide to realistic geography/topography, it's not

[TaylorH]

Thanks for the post, Chick. I still feel like I need a bit more information to feel comfortable, though. My geography is incredibly weak so I really need people to point out some very simple stuff.

If someone has the time:

1. I'd still like an explanation of what 4 in my picture could be.
2. Is it more likely that a wetland will occur by a coast? From what I've seen so far, your map and on the tutorial have the wetland is by the sea. Middle Earth has the dead marshes inland.

I'll edit this post with more questions later as I'm about to try drawing one.

The answer to number 2 depends on what type of wetland, which could technically be any ecosystem where hydrology plays a key role, e.g salt marsh, estuary, bog (acidic peat mire) or fen (alkaline mire), etc. Quick google search for each of these shows where it's most likely located. Just to get the mind going, there are tons of options. A salt marsh is obviously going to be near a coast, because of the saline conditions, which will influence the plants. A blanket bog could be a large expanse in an upland area.

I think what you're really asking is how to draw these types of ecosystems/regions, and I'd argue that's subjective in some sense. Although you wouldn't obviously draw trees on a marsh, as those are usually found in swamps. You could maybe google image satellite views.

[Sarithus]

Hello again. Rivers aren't perfect ofcourse, but I've tried to pay more attention to them. Found Chick's tutorial on rivers and tried to make the rivers uneven in width and double in size at a tributary.

(Slightly worried about white maps and the ease in which someone could delete any signature, thoughts on this?)

[tainotim]

Very cool Sarithus; you have quite a talents for these illustrative maps. Will you color this one or keep it BW? The border is very impressive.

Now, for some very picky feedback(mostly just personal things that I prefer, but perhaps it might help). The "details" on the hills are drawn more horizontal then the mountain more vertical approach. Personally, I think that it looks better when mountains and hills are more congruent in this aspect
The way you do the waves in the lakes gives them a more "top down" feel compared to how you did the body of water just left of the IMPERA label. It helps to confuse the sense of perspective.
And last, I think that the "Aiurak Forest" blends in too much with the marshes and hills. Gives a very strange sense of perspective, if you just look at that part.

Concerning the signature on BW maps: I rarely even think about someone stealing my work, unless it's a commission map and I know that someone actively wants it. Otherwise, I'm more in the state of mind that even if someone stole it, I would probably never know that they had(For the world is dark and full of terrors).

Looking forward to the next awesome update!

Cheers,
Tainotim

[Sarithus]

Very cool Sarithus; you have quite a talents for these illustrative maps. Will you color this one or keep it BW? The border is very impressive.

Now, for some very picky feedback(mostly just personal things that I prefer, but perhaps it might help). The "details" on the hills are drawn more horizontal then the mountain more vertical approach. Personally, I think that it looks better when mountains and hills are more congruent in this aspect
The way you do the waves in the lakes gives them a more "top down" feel compared to how you did the body of water just left of the IMPERA label. It helps to confuse the sense of perspective.
And last, I think that the "Aiurak Forest" blends in too much with the marshes and hills. Gives a very strange sense of perspective, if you just look at that part.

Concerning the signature on BW maps: I rarely even think about someone stealing my work, unless it's a commission map and I know that someone actively wants it. Otherwise, I'm more in the state of mind that even if someone stole it, I would probably never know that they had(For the world is dark and full of terrors).

Looking forward to the next awesome update!

Cheers,
Tainotim

Thanks for the feedback, Tainotim.

Hills: Believe it or not I actually did have vertical lines on the hills but I deleted them in favour of the horizontal ones. I will go back and try out vertical lines again on your suggestion, though!
Lakes: The body of water on the left of Impera is the sea. For some reason I feel that if I did the lakes like the sea it'd still look like it was top down. Perhaps it'd be best to keep the lines inside the lakes to only the edge. I was thinking about doing that anyway because it's hard to follow those lines into the center with smaller lakes and they end up looking different with varying shades.
Forest blending: That was sort of my aim, to be honest. The greywood in the north is meant to blend into mountains, as is Aiurak meant to blend into the hills. (As far as I'm aware that can actually happen, forests atop hills) I wanted the Aiurak to blend into the marsh like it's seeping in. Otherwise it'd be marsh then straight away forest.

Indeed, I was just wondering if anyone had tips for making it more difficult to erase on black and white maps. I'm not too bothered by the possibility, but the chance is higher when someone could easily delete a signature and just leave white space.

Thanks again!