Wimentros - Age of magic (personal project)

[Voolf]

Hello guild members.

Today I have got for you another of my personal projects.
This map was way too long in a "production phase" and I have lost the will to do everything I wanted for it.
Namely, unique city icons as well as few other illustrations.
Still I am quite happy with it.

Hope you like it too.



Here are few wips in my miscellaneous thread.

Cheers
Rafal

[- JO -]

As always, it's a beautiful map! There's your style, of course, which is magical and inimitable (and yet I'm still trying...), and in this particular case, the setting and layout of the map as a whole, which give it that sought-after magical look. The title is also very well thought out and executed, the blue glow is of prime importance and sets a certain tone for the whole map. Well done! (and look forward to the next one)

[Voolf]

Thank you very much JO for the kind words.

[Kellerica]

One of your prettiest in a while, definitely! I love the softer linework and colouring, and the magical glow effects are beautiful. I adore the way the world clearly has an edge and you can see the stars beyond it, such a lovely touch!

The only thing I'm not a fan of are the labels. I personally find the outer glow on them is a bit too strong, (I'd maybe have gone for something softer) and the colour is a bit hit and miss - it looks fine in many places, but in others the contrast between it and the colour of the land beneath is a bit jarring.

That is my only issue though, the map itself is great. I also really like the border and the title, your designs just keep getting better!

[Voolf]

Thank you Kell.

The labels often pose a challenge on full colour maps.
The problem is that they usually blend with background if there is no border with a solid colour.
I personally do not find the colour too bad. If I can I want to avoid labels outline too.
However, I often find out that I have to put it there for better legibility. It is a trade-off of sorts.

There is a way to fix the problem you mentioned, by making the outline separately for every (well almost every) label.
Then one can adjust colour for every label to the background it sits on.
I have done that in one or two of my previous maps and it looks good.
However I did not wanted to play more with this particular map as it looked satisfactory to me

Thanks again for a nice comment.

[Kellerica]

Yeah, I'm exactly the kind of control freak who creates a separate outline for every damn label if I need to!