Domhantyr

[Pixie]

To meet the quality of the artwork, Ilanthar, I'd say none of those fonts work well. Although, the second one is better.

Have you ever tried IM Fell? GreatWhiteNorth directed me to it in a WIP I'm finishing and I fell in love with them. Either with this map or sometime down the road, you should try it.... here's a link: The Fell Types.

Also, I think using a midtone brown instead of black would do wonders for those labels.

Those are my two cents..

[Ilanthar]

Thanks for the useful comments!

Pixie, your 2 cents are made of gold ! This fell types are indeed easier to read (hope it's readable for everyone now) and I changed colors for brown and blue. As Tainotim suggest, I chose a more fancy font for the biggest labels.
And a few tests about sea drawings. A big boat used by the maritime powers of the west and a one of the gigantic sea tarask doing connecting east and west (and carrying a city).
Hope you'll like it.

Probably no udpate till next thursday now, the beach is calling me !

[Ilanthar]

Back from my holiday trip, so back on that map again!
A few more labels and some tests : about sea roads, and about politics.. I'm using the same flags than I did on another old map, but I'm not really glad of it.
I don't want to put borders since it's partly meaningless in a lot of places (countries are often feudal, far from current nations, and there's a lot of city-states or independant places), cultures and language ar more used to define the realms.

What do you guys think?

[Abu Lafia]

Hey Ilanthar, hope you had nice holidays! Great to see you continue on this enormous map. The new labels are indeed good to read now, and i like the idea not to do clear-cut borders but rather mark the cities with flags. In the shown example it looks very good (although the green ones clash a bit with the color palette of the rest of the map in my view). I only fear it could look a bit too crowded and colorful, if all cities on the map are with a flag on top, but it's defenitely worth the try i think! Also, maybe you could add a (thin) outline to the flags, so it fits better with the overall style of your wonderful map?
Cheers,
AL

[ChickPea]

It's a little while since I checked in on this, but boy it's coming together beautifully!

The little city icons look fantastic but I have to echo Abu's comments above about the flags. I'm not 100% sold on them and the colours don't blend as well with the rest of the map. I also wonder how it'll look when there are a large number of flags, but I do understand the difficulty in showing different territories or allegiances without using regional borders. You couldn't put some sort of 'colour coding' on the city icons themselves, or use a background colour on them, or something like that? Not sure how that would look though, probably worse, actually! Your icons are so nice right now and work fantastically well within the map, and it would probably be a bad idea to change them.

[snodsy]

Beautiful colors, I like what you did with the northern sea, breaking up the pattern some. The icons and city names spot on!

I think the labels could have a little bit of letterspacing (kerning), they also seem to have too much word spacing in some places. By letterspacing it would help spread the text out throughout the area and cut down on the word spacing some.


Too much leading for Ethias Heath almost becomes two areas, and does it need to be on an angle? Same thing with Khasint - on a slight angle? The purple text for the sea could be a little bluer? Just some thoughts nice job.

[Daelin]

Oh my, this is quite a project you got going, Ilanthar. I tell ye, I do know that feeling of just breaking your sanity working and working on a map for ages. But I love it, can't stop!
Anyway, this map surely is pretty. I think it's a totally unique style you've got going, and I dig it. Everything from the landmass to the forests, mountains, the icons (they're great!) and the overall pleasant color scheme.
However (and there always is a however, because there's no such thing as a perfect map ), here's a couple of pointers on how I think you could improve what you already got going:
* While the forests look super overall, I do think you should consider removing the line of vertical trunks on the "reverse" side of the forests. Because of the esometric perspective in your map, those trunks "behind" the canopies shouldn't be visible, and the fact that they are lends a M.C. Escher-esque feel to your forests, which slightly disturbs the eye. This isn't as much an issue with the forests that have rounded outlines, they look fine.
* The repetitive nature of the ocean texture looks a bit awkward. I do recognize that particular texture (even considered it a few times for some of my maps) and while it is pretty, having large tracts of open water where the texture repeats ad nauseum looks jarring. This isn't an issue at the top of the map, where the grunge overlay breaks that repetition nicely, so that's one way of solving that, if you're not going to fill in the open sea with something else.
* This isn't so much a criticism, but are you using a mouse to draw your mountains and forests and whatnot? Not that it looks bad. I'm just wondering, because I feel I recognize that particular look from when I try to draw stuff by mouse in my own maps.
* Again, not a criticism, more a suggestion: I think it'd be cool if you somewhere in your map included larger versions of the banners that indicate the cities' allegiance. Maybe that might solve your problems with representing politics?

Anyway, great effort, that still ongoing, even! Keep it up!

[Ilanthar]

Thanks a lot everyone for the constant help and support!

I've decided to remove the flags (not really good with a contour line, not the good colors and too crowded!). I've place small pennants at the borders instead. Not sure if that works either...

@Snodsy : I've reworked the kerning and placement of the labels. The blue labels are blue in my eyes... or on my screen
@Daelin : I gave a try to the top line of the forests (in the middle part of the map) but strangely (because what you wrote makes totally sense), I'm not sure to like it. I tried tro break a bit more the rest of the ocean and seas. And yes, you have an eye for this, I'm drawing everything by mouse. Oh, and I may put the banners in the key, if I have the place for it...

[Chashio]

I haven't looked at this on a big computer screen in a while. It's really looking fantastic! About those little black pennants though... they don't really make sense to me. Perhaps if you strung them together with a dotted line in the same color?

[snodsy]

The labels looks so much better, Heath could use a little keening between the H ans e still. The background pattern is better now more subtle