CC3 Continental Map: The Northlands

[jaerdaph]

Here's my initial thoughts and suggestions.

The mountain symbols - those are the single color "hand drawn" symbol set. Those look best IMHO on black and white maps or black ink on parchment background. They look neat in browns (and other colors) too, but usually on projects you want to look like someone drew by hand. I would suggest you look at the vector symbol set ("old school" CC2 Pro style symbols) with grey mountains that include some shading. While these too are hand drawn, they are also slightly shaded and include more colors. The reason I'm suggesting that is because you chose a vector style landmass and ocean color.

I'd also suggest you consider changing the blue outline of the landmass to black - I think that might make it stick out better.

I can't really see the details of the lake, but are you using one of the newer CC3 style raster PNG fills for that? If so, you might want to make it the same or similar "solid" color to the ocean.

I'm having trouble seeing the coastline glow. There's also other things you could try, like adding a slight drop shadow to the land mass to make it stick out more.

So in short, pick a "style" you want to emphasize, but at the same time, don't be afraid to experiment. I hope this was somewhat helpful.

[Midgardsormr]

That blue outline is actually the glow effect. I am punching the radius way up and changing the color, as you suggested. Now I am noticing that there is a sort of bevel along the edges of the landmass. It wasn't as noticeable when the glow was the same color as the background, but it really stands out now that I have a blue line between the dark glow and the now-cream-colored land.

The lakes are use the "ocean" fill style. I'm assuming that's what you mean by a raster fill? I agree that the lakes and ocean should match, so I made a huge contour object with the fill and sent it to the back. That also had the pleasant side effect of hiding the default compass rose and scale bar.

I haven't gotten very far with the rivers because I am not entirely sure how they work. Right now they look great on the wide view, but if I zoom in they remain hairlines. How do I add some volume to a line that remains an open path?

Well, I could probably go on with more and more questions, but I think I'll take it in bite-sized pieces for the time being. Here's a new image: