Reply With QuoteA little further along now, generally been trying to make it look a little better, add some more variety to colours and such.
First Map (WIP)
Okay, here is where I'm currently at with making my first map. What I'm really looking for here is critique and suggestions on how to improve the map. If I can get the terrain down and to a reasonable standard then I can start thinking about culture and such, but I'd rather make sure the map is of a decent quality before I spend all the effort creating all the lore to go with it.
At the moment the map has land, rivers, mountains and forests. It does not yet have any 'peoples', and it's not 'mounted' on a nice bit of parchment yet.
All criticism welcome!
A little further along now, generally been trying to make it look a little better, add some more variety to colours and such.
From one newbie to another, welcome! Your map looks pretty good, as far as I can tell. Some parts of your rivers tend to blend in to the terrain, so if you can find a way to make them stand out just a little bit more, I think it would be clearer.
A few words: I really like the textures, especially the mountains. They look a but foggy now, though.
What's a bit odd are the rivers. They aren't matching to the textures, sometimes it's looking as if they are running upwards (northern river) or through the whole mountain range (the second river from north which comes from the lake).
You might want to work on the river endings as well, maybe deltas or something, currently the edges where the rivers source into the sea are looking odd.
Hope that helps a bit, generally it's a very beautiful first map.
Oh, and welcome to the guild.
Avatar by courtesy of Castaras from the GiantitP-Forums
Looks good.Welcome to the Guild!
Daniel the Neon Knight: Campaign Cartographer User
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MY 'FAMOUS' CC3 MAPS: Thunderspire; Pyramid of Shadows; King of the Trollhaunt Warrens; Demon Queen's Enclave
A very nice job for a first map.
Right now I only have a few constructive comments. The size of the continent seems a little small for the overall size of the map, maybe you should try filling in the large empty areas of the ocean with small archipelagos or large islands, or shrink the size of the map itself to have less empty space. As far as the terrain goes I think you should make the mountain snow blend a little better so it looks more like it follows the contours of the peaks below instead of just sitting on top of them. I think you might want to toy with the colors of the overall terrain as well to get something that looks a little more earthy (darker greens for example).
I hope that helps you as you continue to work, looking forward to the next WIP.
Since the things that I see have already been mentioned I'll just stick to that one river in the top left. I would not expect a river to arc back through the mountains, valley or not. The land around a mountain chain is all uplifted, and water runs downhill, so I'd expect that river to continue on to the lower left where there is a nice little cove/bay to empty into. Good start, though.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
Okay thanks guys for the comments. I've tried to update it to reflect what you've been saying - if there's any more violations of physics or ways to improve it - or just things I've forgotten, then please do tell me!
This is the map as it is now, I've started plonking down castles and cities for the 'main' nation (although as depicted here their power is very much waning) The end idea is to write a story in which this kingdom features heavily. Since I haven't done a map legend, the red dots represent towns. Big red dot with a white inner is a city. Double red ring is a fort/castle/fortress. If anyone knows any good symbol brushes which feature better symbols for map marking then please let me know!
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