The Crystal Isles

[NordicSoul]

Hello Everyone! So this is my first attempt at making a map (or at least trying to). Since I was a boy I used to look at Tolkien's books and was fascinated by the maps it contained, and since then I've been trying to create new worlds and draw them, and recently (a few years ago) I found my way into RolePlaying. I'm now staff in a Minecraft Roleplay Server, and so I tried to make a map of the known world (well, it's the only playable part of the world at least) - the Crystal Isles. I hope you guys like it and, if you are willing to, critic my work so I can improve.

PS: The waves were 3 brushes I made from Tolkien's work (or at least a graphical representation of one of his maps), and so I do not claim credit upon those. I also used 2 brush sets that are in this forum available for download. I might make my own in the future.

Map_Crystal_Isles_tolkionized_normal_zps53066134.png
Resized Version, the original was 2000x2000

[Lingon]

Hey NordicSoul, welcome to the forums! Excellent job for your first map. I love how you did the water, especially. (I have some thoughts on the geography, but since this is a Minecraft world I guess there's not much to do about that?)

[NordicSoul]

Yeah, I didn't really have anything to do with the terrain creation itself, though it was custom. As for the sea waves, I only did that later on as I realized I had added way too many elements into the land, which drew a lot of attention to those spots, so I figured I would create some brushes from Tolkien's works and make that transition of sorts. I would still like to hear your thoughts about the geography, as it might help me with future maps.

[Lingon]

Well, something that struck me is that the main islands are almost at the same distance from each other. I think it'd look more natural if they where more spread out and irregularly spaced. Mountains would not really form that way either; depending on the scale of this map, they would either be ranges, often on the edges of the continents (if the map shows continents), or ridges along the approximate center of the islands (if it's an archipelago). I hope it helps

[NordicSoul]

It does, thanks!