Horitea (Name may change in the future), my first map [WIP]

[Lucifer]

Hi Lucifer,

That is a nice start. So, you plan to make all your map in "airplane view" (as opposed as isometric view) ? That's quite a challenge, I think. Maybe because I think it's easier with an iso view...

You made your border early in your work. I hope you do not plan to enlarge the content of your map (with some title, legend, maybe waves around your coastline)... because it will be more difficult to modify the border subsequently.

Good luck !

Thanks for the kind words. Can you explain why that would be a problem, adding legend title etc. later on? I mean, why would I have to modify the border for that? I plan on adding all of that within the confines of my current border.

Hey Lucifer, I really like the shape of the landmass.

Here are a couple of videos that could help with your mountain issue:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bcokgs7cEv4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGQvsiDFrAU

Thanks for the videos! Sadly, the style I'm going for is a little different but I do think I've figured out something that looks pleasing now. Shading is still an issue that I'm concerned about with this style as I've never done shading before.


In other news, I've completed the mountains (for now). I might add more small mountain ranges in the center of the continent. My next step is rivers but I still haven't figured out how to do them in a way that satisfies me. :/

Also, I'm wondering how people would usually do colouring for countries/political borders etc. Do you paint them manually or do use selections and bucket fill? I'm not sure how I'd do a selection of my continent and things like that.

### Latest WIP ###

[Mornagest]

It doesn't have to be a problem in my case, I made the border at the end of the WIP because I knew I wanted to add "waves" around the coastline. I also had too few place to put the title of my map under the continent so I had to expand it afterwards...

If you don't intend to do so, you will have no problem for this

For the colour of your political regions, if each isle shall be a different region, it is easy to select each one with the magic wand selector in GIMP, when you are on your coastline layer.

I would suggest you to add those colours on a new layer especially created for this task, so you can modify, hide or delete it whenever you want.

[Lucifer]

It doesn't have to be a problem in my case, I made the border at the end of the WIP because I knew I wanted to add "waves" around the coastline. I also had too few place to put the title of my map under the continent so I had to expand it afterwards...

If you don't intend to do so, you will have no problem for this

For the colour of your political regions, if each isle shall be a different region, it is easy to select each one with the magic wand selector in GIMP, when you are on your coastline layer.

I would suggest you to add those colours on a new layer especially created for this task, so you can modify, hide or delete it whenever you want.

Thanks for the help! I think I've figured out how to do my countries now, using your advice and some tutorials. Once I've figured out how to do my rivers I'll tackle that.

[Lucifer]

Alright, I've added rivers and colour for my nations! I'm super excited about how it turned out, the magic wand tool is indeed magic and I'm so glad that I did have separate layers for everything Next up is adding cities & naming, I guess. I do also want to add a copyright symbol to make sure the map is indentifiable as mine but not sure how to best do that.

### Latest WIP ###

[Mornagest]

It takes a good turn carry on !

You removed the "old parchment texture" of your latest WIP, is it because you want to have a "political" version of your map and a "geographical" ?

[Lucifer]

It takes a good turn carry on !

You removed the "old parchment texture" of your latest WIP, is it because you want to have a "political" version of your map and a "geographical" ?

No, I don't plan on doing a geographical version right now but now that you say it, I might actually do one. Maybe once I have this one finished and a little bit of time has passed. The original reason for changing the parchment texture to this blueish tone was simply me not really liking the darker version and preferring a somewhat brighter ocean texture.

[Lucifer]

Aaaalright, the map is coming along nicely (I think) and I managed to even add some roads. I'm not 100% sure about the roads but I'll review them once I've added the water trading routes as there's a whole bunch of sea & ocean on this map. I might also add some more cities, maybe even a few exra mountains and rivers.

Also, I finally decided on a name, which means a pretty drastic name change from the one in the thread title. But that's the nature of things, I guess.

Any critique is appreciated.

### Latest WIP ###


Edit: Aaaand I just realized after posting that I messed up the legend for cities.

[Mornagest]

Just some things (to me) : the name "Andrakien" could be a little bit more centered on the country. And the name "Kalifat Varish" could not cross the coastline of the southern island. As you have some space on your map, take beneift of it

Apart from this, your map seems really good, you had a good idea of what you intended to, I guess ?

[Warlin]

Hi Lucifer. Good job you did there .
If I may suggest, you could give more consistency to your map by varying the width of your river from the top to the bottom. Perhaps you plan to give some color to your sea, it may help to characterize it. For the caterpillar mountains, it's a pretty well done first attempt. It's great to see more cartographers trying this style .
Cheers.

[Lucifer]

Just some things (to me) : the name "Andrakien" could be a little bit more centered on the country. And the name "Kalifat Varish" could not cross the coastline of the southern island. As you have some space on your map, take beneift of it

Apart from this, your map seems really good, you had a good idea of what you intended to, I guess ?

Thanks for the advice. Kalifat Varish is something that's been bugging me a little bit, to be honest. For Andrakien, I'll also try and put it into a more central position.

I did have a fairly good idea of the style I wanted, although I did not know how to do any of it when I started a few days ago. I guess it really shows how far you can go if you know what you want.

Hi Lucifer. Good job you did there .
If I may suggest, you could give more consistency to your map by varying the width of your river from the top to the bottom. Perhaps you plan to give some color to your sea, it may help to characterize it. For the caterpillar mountains, it's a pretty well done first attempt. It's great to see more cartographers trying this style .
Cheers.

Hi Warlin, and thanks for the kind words!

About the rivers, I've not been able to get the kind of width variation that you managed to achieve on your Atlantide maps. Maybe my approach of using GIMP's ink tool is simply not the right one for it? You mean colour different to the colour of my border? That might be a good idea, yes I will see if i can handle that.

And thanks for the compliment on the mountains. I'm really envying you for the amount of depth you achieved with yours. I'll have to try and figure out how to do that some day.