Tornalia (WIP - later stages)

[Karro]

All in all, this is a very fine map. Pretty, clean style, nice work on the coasts, and everything seems, mostly to fit.

[Scott Livingston]

I've been taking everyone's comments and feedback to heart, and have made a few changes. First, I darkened the mountains as Steel General suggested, by playing with the lighting and contrast. After doing so, I noticed some issues with the terrain color layer that weren't as obvious with lighter mountains, so I touched up that layer with the smudge tool and a Gaussian blur. I also made the ice layer a little more transparent, in order for the peaks of snow-covered mountains to show through a little more clearly.

Next, I played around with various filters, trying to achieve a subtle foresty texture as Gidde suggested. I eventually went with two layers, one with a watercolor effect and the other with a sponge-painting effect. I think I like this, but I need to sleep on it and get a few opinions before I decide for sure about this style. Forests make up a huge portion of the western half of the continent, so I think it's important to get it right. I have noticed a few issues where the forest texture layer shows up in areas beyond the forest color...I'll have to clean that up if I decide to keep the texture.

I'm also thinking of adding a few more features...things like ruins, fortresses, wonders of the world...still thinking about how to do it. I don't want to clutter things too much. So that's something to look forward to. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Gidde]

I like that a lot. It keeps the stylized look while still giving the eye something to denote 'forest'

As far as adding details, I think this one has enough for its scale and style. I'd start picking regions and zooming in on them for new, more detailed maps.

[Ascension]

Yep, it looks pretty well done to me and has a nice look to it.

[Ramah]

Sweet looking map. I really like that hint of texture you've put in there.

If I had one comment on something I'd change it would be the border around the cartouche slightly. Maybe thicken your line up a little, or add another, slightly smaler box inside it for decoration. It just looks a little empty there at the moment. But then that's a nothing nitpick, it doesn't take away from the map at all. good stuff.

[Steel General]

Looking quite nice.

[Scott Livingston]

A few additional tweaks here and there...

I worked on the legend border as Ramah had suggested; personally, I like the border much more now. And I made it so the terrain color layer and the forest texture layers match up a bit better (previously I had forest texture stretching onto the edges of tundra and grasslands).

I also changed more labels, making many of the geographical labels smaller and adding a few new ones. As promised, I also added some ruins. Finally, I added a few political labels, because it wasn't clear before which cities belonged to whom. I didn't want to add borders, because in most places they aren't clearly defined. I'm curious what people think of these political labels, particularly the one about the Torlak Empire. Does it work, or does it seem out of place?

I think the next update will be the last one, at least for this version of the map.

[Gandwarf]

Very impressive and close to finished!

[Steel General]

Other than the fonts used, it looks like it could come out of a social studies text book.

Nice job...

[MadLetter]

I have one criticism: Part of the Naming.

Do as I did and look up an online Thesaurus and check for alternatives to "River". It is - to me - always a bit disturbing if every river follows the "X River" schematics. It's the same as if you'd name every mountain(range): "X Mountain(s)".

Leave the River out in some places and just call the River something like "The X-Ka-Bla" (bad ex.) or "South Flow", "King's Stream" or whatever.

Minor concern, though. Looks nice otherwise.