Baby's First Steps

[AaronAugustus]

*Deep Breaths Deep Breaths*

Okay the following two maps are for a play by post role playing workshop called Althanas. The challenge here is that the site is more than ten years old with an already established terrain and plenty of contradictions. I should know. I'm a moderator there. First I started out with a stylized canvas map. I even used the region's ancient name 'Al'Thayne' for this.

Al'Thaynefl.gif

I don't really care much about that one. I just used it as a tool to build a general consensus about the landmasses and the countries. Any constructive criticism is welcome though. What I'm really concerned with is the following map...

Atlas FU.jpg

... I used Ascension's Atlas Style Tutorial for GIMP to do this. I haven't put in any forests, rivers, boundaries or anything like that yet because I wanted to get some notes on what I've done so far before I continue. I feel like the sea board and the ocean in general are messed up in some way. I just cant put my finger on it.

[Ascension]

To me, it looks like you deleted the area closest to the landmasses and textured the "deep" ocean part instead of the other way around. Delete the deep ocean and leave the shallow places and then give that the texturing for the continental shelf. If you want some bathymetry then do another deep ocean part and texture that but do it lightly.

[AaronAugustus]

I think it's fixed. Thanks. That really helped.

Atlas FU.jpg

Are there any other notes you might suggest before I continue?

[Ascension]

In my maps I use those tiny bump things as hills so you might want to fade out the edge of them so that they blend into the terrain better (use a big low opacity eraser). You could easily turn them into forests with a dark green color. The mountains in the north have some weird red thing going on, you could change that to a brown or a gray. Otherwise it's time for you to play around and experiment with things.

[AaronAugustus]

I cleaned up the mountains and spruced up the snowcaps a bit. I haven't dealt with the forests yet. It's going to be kind of crazy because I have to create a cursed Red Forest on the eastern edge of the mainland.

Atlas FU.jpg

I threw some rivers in there just to try it out, and I moved on to the label's and boarders just for kicks. I do have a question about decor: compass, trade routes, fonts, and the like. I particularly would like to try to create a boarder. Any tips?

[cantab]

On the latest map, the pair of craters in the NW look a bit too "regular" I think.

Fallien should probably be all shallow sea inside the bay/lagoon, unless your story says otherwise of course. With the inland sea, you might make some parts rather shallower, like the real Caspian sea which is very shallow in the north, deepening to about 1000 m in the south. Varying the width of the continental shelf for the mainland would add some interest and realism.

[cfds]

Impact craters are pretty regular in real life. The splitting rivers are a far worse offense...

[Juggernaut1981]

Yeah the energy released and the physics of cratering leaves basically circular marks. Take a look at the moon, all of those impact craters are near circular. There are a bunch of famous craters and they're basically circular.
Take a look at the satellite photos of this crater from Wikipedia... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manicouagan_crater

[bartmoss]

Yeah the energy released and the physics of cratering leaves basically circular marks. Take a look at the moon, all of those impact craters are near circular. There are a bunch of famous craters and they're basically circular.
Take a look at the satellite photos of this crater from Wikipedia... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manicouagan_crater

DUDE. Thank you for that link. A circular sea, I love it.

[bartmoss]

Attention, attention! This is the River Police! We have you partially surrounded!

In addition to the forking rivers, and the branches that "go nowhere", you also have a river connect two coasts on the Corone southeast Island!