[wip] Azir - generic fantasy world!

[Svea]

Hey everyone! I am back after a long break!

Been working on this map here for about 14 hours or so, and I feel that it is
currently in a worthy state of being showed to you guys.

I am desperetly looking for critique on it, whatever that you guys can think of.
Especially on a few different points, namely;


*Roads. Are they too small? too many? wrong colour? etc etc

*Overall tone. Are the colours ok? Should I change anything?

*Busyness. Is there too much stuff on the map? I was going for tolkien-esque and I realize
that his map is -very- busy, with stuff everywhere. Is mine ok? I made it quite big so it
would be ok to zoom in quite far and still have decent quality.

*Flair I added three images to the right side of the map. A compass, a dragon and a skull. I wanted some flair to my oceans
as they are relatively boring. But I am unsure about the choice that I have picked. Also, any ideas where on the map they would look best? or are the spots I have picked decent enough? Any thought on them / any other that would look better?

*Text. How is the font that I have picked? I wanted a fantasy-like font but still being relatively readable. Also, should I be putting
any effects on the text? I tried the drop-shadow+outer glow but it just made it look weird I felt. Though I guess it would be nice to have -something- so the text does not look like it was printed onto the map, but rather drawn onto it and slightly faded with time. Ideas?

And of course, anything that you guys can think of! Please leave a comment, good or bad! Love to hear your thoughs on this map! It's my 2nd map here. Well, it is the same outline as the first map I made, but I decided to change style because I was not pleased with how the first one turned out.

Thanks a lot guys!


-----EDIT--- Is the different tropical regions obvious enough? Like in the north in Laressa & Thargon you have the pine trees, etc like scandinavia. And then in the middle is supposed to be like europe, and in the south - Griggzhin and below - it's more like spain and northern africa? ALSO is it obvious that the area between Thargon and Nidoria is a desert? Or do I need to write something there to make it even more obvious? Thanks!

[Wired]

Okay, just a few notes from me before I fall asleep:
- drop the dragon and the dragon+skull; they just don't fit
- the colors are fine for what you're trying to achieve
- I feel the grass brushes you used are too large; you should go with half or 75% the size
- as for the area between Thargon and Nidoria; I would have thought swamps
- I think the font and choice of text is fine, but I don't think you had to turn even half of them

Keep working on this one, I think it'll end really good.

[Chick]

Hi Svea,

This is a very nice map! I like pretty much all you have done. There is one place where the lakeshore line overlaps a mountainside line, but should be easy to fix. Also you should add outlet rivers for each of the big lakes, leading eventually to the sea.

A few tweaks and you have a fine map!!

[ChickPea]

You're off to a great start and I really like what you have so far (I have a real soft spot for Tolkien-ish maps!)

I'd mostly echo the comments from Wired and Chick above with a couple of other small points. I like your compass rose but I'm not sure the colour really fits with the rest of your map. Everything else is in a faded brown-ish tone, but the compass is almost black. I feel like you need to turn down the opacity a little on it, and maybe add a tiny bit of blur to make it merge into the background like the rest of the linework. I don't mind the dragon but not quite so sure about the skull, unless you can justify its presence in some other way. It feels a bit heavy metal cliché at the moment. I think your labelling is OK but you could possibly get away with making them a little smaller. If you need labels that aren't horizontal, I think they often look nicer if they're slightly curved, rather than just tilted diagonally (though sometimes lack of space can dictate what direction the text goes). You might want to consider removing any grass or whatever's underneath a label in order to make it more legible.

Overall, I think what you've got is looking really good and a few small tweaks will make it look great! I'm looking forward to your next update.

[Jayharchitect]

Great work. I like the little Cactuar with swords in the deserts (just kidding! But that's what I saw!) . The trees are great. I notice some of your mountains get their tops cropped off by the shorelines, especially on the just west of the G in Griggzhin.

[Svea]

Hey everyone! Thanks for your kind words!

http://i.imgur.com/yPgfM5H.jpg V1.2

I went ahead and removed the skull and the dragon, they did indeed not fit. I instead added in a ship, which I think looks a lot better. I did reduce the opacity on the compass but might have to actually change it's colours slightly to get a more brown look on it for it to fully blend in with the rest.

I also touched up some of the mountains where they were overlapping with the lakes, should be better now. Though the mountains to the right of Falonde might look a bit suspect right near the line. I think it's passable, tho.

I also reduced the size of all the names save for 2. I made more of them horizontal, but I think it just looks terribly boring, thats why I had so many that was slightly turned. Any ideas how to make them more interesting? I like the idea of arcing them like chick suggested, but might look weird if ALL of them are curved, lol.

Again, any and all comments are welcomed! thanks.

[Chick]

I like the idea of arcing them like chick suggested, but might look weird if ALL of them are curved, lol.

Don't curve them all. Keep most labels straight and horizontal. Angle them if you have to in order to make them fit where they need to be.

Curve only the ones that span a large area and need to indicate the extent of that area.

It's best to classify your labels into groups .... oceans, kingdoms, cities, forests, mountain ranges, etc. Then use exactly the same style for everything within a class. If you arc the kingdom names, arc them all. If you name forests, arc them all or none. The look -- font, kerning, size, color, angle/curvature, etc -- should be the same for everything in a class.

[waldronate]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jvydmereu9...123PM.zip?dl=0 ( as referenced in http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...ad.php?t=28163 ) might be a useful read for the text placement.

One thing that I found jarring was the look of old ink on the coastline, but the use of jet-black line styling for all of the interior line work. I recommend picking a line style and sticking with it, even if you need to add an effects layer or two to get the ink spreading effect.

I also found the background a bit dark, but I think that it's my personal problem with the idea of maps (an abstraction done for a client's purpose and committed to a physical artifact) as compared to pictures of maps (the endless muddy backgrounds and grunge brushes that try to invoke the appearance of the artifact that has a map on it).