Daxtera

[Dumont]

After way too many hours, I'm happy to post my first world map, Daxtera:

ctg_progress4.jpg

This is just for the D&D game I'm running, but I wanted to learn about making high-quality maps and had some time between projects, and so I kind of got lost in this.

This is 90% Photoshop, 10% Wilbur, a tiny bit of GIMP (almost none of which made it into the final product, but hey, credit where credit's due), probably 50 hours of work, mountain range assets from the Shaded Relief Archive (thanks for the tip Daelin!), inspiration from dozens of other gorgeous maps posted by people more talented than me, and was only possible thanks to about half of the PDF's available in this post, though I wanna give special shoutouts to Arsheesh's massively helpful Wilbur and Forest-making tutorials (also in that link), both of which I adapted heavily into my Photoshop process.

I will probably come back to this again at some point and do more polish on it, especially as I end up adding more landmarks to the map due to the campaign exploring Daxtera. But for now, it's at a point where I feel comfortable posting it here.

Thanks to everyone who offered critiques and feedback in my WIP thread!

[Kellerica]

Gongrats on finishing ypur first map! Not bad, not bad at all. I like the landshape, the simple border looks really neat, and the colors are very pleasant to look at. I personally think the mountain reliefs - as gorgeous as they are - don't quite go with the overall style of the map though... but that's just me.

Have some rep!

Also, I have to ask... is there a story behind that one location up north called "Valtakunta"? As a Finn the name somewhat caught my eye amongst the others...

[Dumont]

Also, I have to ask... is there a story behind that one location up north called "Valtakunta"? As a Finn the name somewhat caught my eye amongst the others...

I am awful at naming locations, and around the point where I start randomly typing in syllables until something sounds right, I suffer burnout. On this one, doing research, I ended up finding a map that was built around Scandinavian folklore, and used a couple of the names for the northern zones.

Please let me know if I have inadvertently named a town the equivalent of '****bucket' or something.

[Kellerica]

I am awful at naming locations, and around the point where I start randomly typing in syllables until something sounds right, I suffer burnout. On this one, doing research, I ended up finding a map that was built around Scandinavian folklore, and used a couple of the names for the northern zones.

Please let me know if I have inadvertently named a town the equivalent of '****bucket' or something.

Haha, no ****bucket or anything of the like, rest easy 'Valtakunta' is the Finnish word for 'kingdom', so it's not usually used as a name on its own.

[Dumont]

Haha, no ****bucket or anything of the like, rest easy 'Valtakunta' is the Finnish word for 'kingdom', so it's not usually used as a name on its own.

Wouldn't have been the end of the world (no pun intended) if I'd needed to rename something, but it still would have been embarrassing.

Thanks to everyone as well for the kind words! Still excited about the results on this one and hoping to learn from it for the next project. Would be interested in advanced/detailed nitpicks if anyone would be willing to offer, especially with geography, colors, and textures.

[ThomasR]

The warm colors make for a beautiful map Dumont. Zoomed out, you managed to get a painterly feel that is very nice.

[Matthew VE]

Fantastic! Very amazing for your first world map. I didn't catch the WIP, but I don't have any critiques, this is very, very nice!

[Tom]

I love colorful maps! Well done!

[Diamond]

Fantastic work - very clean, vibrant colors, and good use of those reliefs. Love the style!

[Dumont]

....oh.

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