Vale of Thorns

[beriothien]

Created how?: Handdrawn and scanned with unfortunately bad scanner.

Review:
Created for Zousha, of the GitP forums.
One of my earliest works, pretty bad. My major annoyance with this map is that I played too much with the letter style.(And my bad handwriting)
This style was inspired by the map of Middle Earth by C.J.R.T. Unfortunately, I do not know who that is, since I found this map as a free thing that came along with a english copy of the Hobbit that I bought at that time.

On the style of the map: It needed more hills or a good way to tell height difference.
But in the end, Zousha was happy with it.
Previous Thread: None. I'm intending to learn how to map with GIMP, so as soon as I get remotely decent and such I'l post one in the WIP forum.

P.P.s. First map on this forum from me.
P.P.s. Critique is very welcome for future maps.
P.P.P.s Let's hope I didn't do too much wrong, please do tell what I did wrong.

Map:

[Steel General]

The biggest mistake most new cartographers make is the rivers do not split as they go downstream. I made the same mistake in my earlier maps (and still do every once in a while).

Rivers generally start at higher elevations (hills, mountains, etc.) and follow the path of least resistance as they head toward lakes and/or oceans. Smaller rivers will converge into larger ones (think of a tree). Another thing to remember is that multiple rivers may feed into a lake, but generally only 1 will act as an 'exit'.

Of course if you have various reasons as to why you don't want to follow these guidelines, then by all means ignore them.