WIP Tharkas, IMW-ish Style Test

[Mayjune]

I've been trying to create a detailed mapping style somewhat reminiscent of the IMW as part of a very long-term project of mine; I think I've probably settled on something that works but would like some additional feedback. This a series of tropical islands with the smaller map being the more northernly of the two (while still being technically fully within the tropics). Land contours are set at 300' (91.44m), sea at 150' (45.72m). Sadly none of the water features/hydrology are notated yet with the exception of the (single small) lake at the southern portion of the larger map. Graticules are set at 1 degree intervals, and the map is projected in Alber's Equal-Area Conic with a scale of 100 pixels to ten miles (about 16.1 km).

[Mayjune]

I did another small group of islands, I think after this I'll start working more generally on the coasts of the rest of the world map.

[waldronate]

There is a lot of crinkly detail on those contours that screams "synthetic" to me. Perhaps a median filter on the heightfield before generating the contours would help? Or maybe a simplifying operation on the contours if you're getting vector elements. It will largely depend on your production chain and tools, of course.

[Mayjune]

I think that helped a lot. I feathered the edges of each elevation layer by three (except for the coasts, which I didn't touch) and then sharpened the edges and redid the color fill and contours. Should I be more aggressive with the smoothing or leave it as-is?

[waldronate]

That does look much better. It doesn't strike me as obviously synthetic.
One thing to watch out for in the real world is that different areas have different characteristics and that will show as variations in how crinkly the contours are. A silly trick that you can try (depending on your particular software and workflow) to represent some of that variation is to increasingly smooth the non-coast contours as you get closer to sea level. It should be a pretty subtle effect, but it's intending to represent the idea that land closer to sea level tends to be more soft sediments then the harder rock in the mountains. Again, it should be a very subtle effect and may well not be worth the effort.

[Mayjune]

I ended up doing the subtle contour trick and I really like the results (and I also made some further changes to the contours like changing the color and opacity, and adding index contours every 1,200' [365.76m]). This particular map is a gift I'm making for a colleague who liked my art, and it's also doubling as a technique testing map before I start working on my project again hahahaha. Still needs a cartouche and more details, but I'll get on that with time.

[Mayjune]

Last-minute color changes, I think I like this one even better.

[Mayjune]

I did the math and no glaciers unfortunately, but I did end up coloring in the extent of the snowpack if measured on April 22nd. I think it makes the map lot more legible. Next is figuring out how to do the cartouche. Time to start digging around for tutorials.

[Mayjune]

I finished up the border and made some other smaller changes, but I'm really happy with this so far. The overall style works extremely well for me so far. I think I'll call it good for the night.

[Mayjune]

Well, here's a small section that I might consider "done-ish." It still has a lot of problems but it's getting better.

Things to fix:

Summits need to have their font size increased from 14 pt to...probably around 16 pt? As of now with the italics they're much too small and hovering right on the edge of legibility, which I don't like.

Probably could increase the visibility of the text underlay by just a tad -- unsure if I should change how far it extends out from the text, the opacity, or both. As it stands for the areal designations it's probably fine.

Definitely gotta rearrange a fair number of the point designations to better increase legibility, as it stands it's not how I want them.

Proooobably should change the opacity of the contours down just a bit. As it stands now they're at 40%, might switch that down to 35% and see how it goes.

The final bit of noise applied to the map for texture....is it too little, too much? I'm leaning towards too much, but overall it feels unclear.

Would love to hear opinions on any of these things.