First Map

[lollo]

This is my first map and posting. A friend threatened to post it for me if I didn't.
I drew it by hand and then added details. I only know the basics of Corel PSP X so there are no layers or anything fancy.
There is no scale, I just went with what I thought looked good. The names are uninspired because I just went with what came to mind.
The continent and islands outline are all using a mouse. My left hand was a little stiff after using the right handed "ergonomic" mouse for so long. I gotta get rid of that thing.

FINAL2.jpg[

[mearrin69]

Hmmm...I wonder who that would be? The River Police will be along shortly for a discussion. I think it looks great! Have some rep.
M

[lollo]

River police caught up with me. (-;
Thanks for the rep and the threat/encouragement. Land masses are the most fun to draw, especially the fjords. Just draw it pixel by pixel.

[Larb]

I like the colour scheme and the shapes and landmass shapes are nice and complex too. The text really needs some kind of stroke or outerglow to make it more readable though, especially over the forested areas.

[lollo]

Thanks for that, really sweated on the color scheme. I wanted it to look like an area rich in natural resources.
I was too hasty with the text. I will try out some ideas to fix it. I dont want the tect to overwhelm everything else either, so I have to balance it out.l

[Gidde]

Holy cow, no layers? That's impressive! And the land shapes look really good; interesting features

On labels, I'd like to add to Larb's accurate comments: if this is for your home game or whatnot it probably doesn't matter, but generally red/green is a really bad contrast, because there are a lot of color blind folks who see them as exactly the same. So for a color-blind person, your labels will almost completely disappear. I'd go with something non-red and much darker, so that you get a good contrast with the green beneath.

On rivers, you have an awful lot of them doing very strange things; check out the How to get your rivers in the right place sticky in the tutorial section if you get a chance. It's a wealth of information. The short short version is that a river system should usually look like a tree; the "branches" are at high places/mountains/springs etc. and the trunk runs into the ocean. Sometimes (but it's a lot more rare than most people think) you'll get a delta where it meets the ocean, like roots on the tree. The rivers here are joining and splitting like mad, which usually doesn't happen because water will follow the easiest route downslope, and in the meantime it's cutting itself a deeper channel. So a split is usually extremely temporary (a river will change course from time to time), and then one of the channels will dry up as the other deepens.

[lollo]

Thanks for the input. Yeah the rivers are not right. I will check out the tutorial for sure. I think I will stick with this map and try out some ideas on it. I like your visual for how rivers work.

[arsheesh]

First map and no layers huh, not bad at all. Welcome to the Guild lollo.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Valtharius]

I like it. The brings me back to the days of the old Judges Guild maps of the late 70's/early 80's.