Continent of Val'Gaard

[Torius]

Hello everyone,

Here is my first attempt at the continent of Val'Gaard for my role playing group's setting. I have drawn on the immense knowledge and tutorial's of this site, incorporating a lot from Gidde's conversion of Ascension's Atlas Style. I have also learned a lot from RobA and his tutorials. I used Fractal Terrains, Wilbur and GIMP in the creation process. My next step will be to lay out the rivers. After reading numerous posts on this site, I decided to not rush the rivers as i don't want the River Police to come knockin' !!

[tilt]

looks like a nice map from the thumb of it ... a little advice would be, upload your pictures in jpg format - for one thing jpg takes up much less space than bmp - and in addition to that - when you click on the photo in the viewer, if its a jpg it opens directly in the browser for easy viewing, whereas bmp has to be downloaded and opened in for instance photoshop

[Torius]

I'll swithc to jpg on the next update

Would love some more feedback on the colors and general look to this continent. This is my first real map, I had attempted a satellite styled map previously but after looking over so many of the works out here, it seemed lack luster. Any comments/critique would be appreciated.

I have made my river mask and plan on drawing in the major rivers next and hope to have that done in next couple of days.

[Torius]

Okay, I have brightened up the land areas and added Rivers. They are exagerated with the color here so that it is easy to see the river placement. In reality, I will change to multiply on that layer and fade it out.

To get an idea of the size of this continent it is similar to the size of North America.

Now that I have my rivers, I will be able to outline the political borders and label the countries!

[tilt]

looks really good - and no river violations ... however when you lighten the rivers, remember to taper them making them start as thin lines and getting stronger as they meet up. The lands look very green and lush - maybe a little to green... all in all a really cool map - have some rep for your firsts postings

[Torius]

Thanks Tilt!
Now I am reading about river tapering
Also noticed I had moved a layer on accident creating a blurred coast, so fixing my last upload now!

[Aenigma]

Nice layout of the land!

[alizarine]

This is looking really good. It is a bit green and might benefit from some "roughening up" like adding some not-so-grassy/green areas, although you certainly shouldn't get rid of the grass entirely in any area unless it's supposed to be barren. I like your mountains, although the rough land around it (which I assume area hilly regions) appears a bit too tiny-bumpy (wow, what great language there ^.^; ). Personally, the coastal shelf (or whatever) around the land in the ocean is a bit strong, especially as it surrounds all the land, not just portions. The rivers are well-placed although they appear to have lots and lots of curves set close together, but that might just be my perception (& I am certainly not that great at rivers myself - if you like them, by all means leave them). All in all, despite me critiques I am liking how this map is turning out. The overall colors are excellent and both the thumbnail and larger map look quite good. Oh, the ocean is especially good looking; you didn't live it out when giving this map some attention!

- Alizarine

[Torius]

I fixed up the rivers and added some taper to them in this version. The first pic is with the rivers exaggerated, second pic is how subtle they will actually be.
Next step will be to roughen up the land color some, to get some not so green areas in the continent
Good tips so far, thank you for the comments!

[tilt]

nicely tapered, but I feel the rivers get a little too week in the second map, so somewhere in between the two maps would be nice