Calisdania

[Chick]

Just playing around with a recent map I made to see what it would look like in an actual book.


Map in Antique Book Calisdania.jpg


Here's the map itself.

World Style 11 C.jpg

[Deadshade]

Nice effect.
But for an apparently thick book it looks too flat, especially the bottom edge.
You could deform the center and overlay a shadowing like that :
Book.png

[Chick]

Nice effect.
But for an apparently thick book it looks too flat, especially the bottom edge.
You could deform the center and overlay a shadowing like that :
Book.png

Thank you for the suggestion, Deadshade, you are probably right. This was just a bit of play, not a finished idea.

Nice map, the overhaul feeling really works well, just 2 small critics: First your mountains lines could have been a little bit thiner, and for the dots that represent cities maybe you could have used something different from the dots used to represent roads.

Thank you for the constructive ideas, Francissimo. I'll take a look at both of those things.

[Francissimo]

Nice map, the overhaul feeling really works well, just 2 small critics: First your mountains lines could have been a little bit thiner, and for the dots that represent cities maybe you could have used something different from the dots used to represent roads.

[- Max -]

You might want also to check your forests, some trees are overlapping which isn't very aesthetic. Also aren't the river flowing from Big Tern Lake and the ones near Marshdell and Morport supposed to take a shorter way to the sea that they do at the moment? I would also try to add some white stroke or outer glow on some labels, especially ones on the forests. At print size, some would be barely legible. The landmass shape is pretty good. It somehow reminds me a continent I draw some times ago which is good because I liked it a lot

[Chick]

You might want also to check your forests, some trees are overlapping which isn't very aesthetic. Also aren't the river flowing from Big Tern Lake and the ones near Marshdell and Morport supposed to take a shorter way to the sea that they do at the moment? I would also try to add some white stroke or outer glow on some labels, especially ones on the forests. At print size, some would be barely legible. The landmass shape is pretty good...

Rivers do not take the "shortest way to the sea". That idea implies that the water somehow knows where the nearest sea is and consciously flows that direction. Water flows downhill, no matter where the nearest sea is. The person I am doing this for wanted the river where it is, so I deliberately placed hills along the eastern coastlands to provide the high ground keeping the river flowing southward.

Trees growing closely together do overlap from a somewhat side perspective, is this not pretty natural?

I agree about the outer glow. The labels on top of the forests and mountains do in fact have a white outer glow, but clearly it is not strong enough.

As for the land shape, it follows the general lines that my friend gave me. This is the first map where I have hand drawn the coastlines and the mountains instead of using a blob method. I looked long and hard at many maps posted here on CG for inspiration about coastline shapes and mountain shapes, and Max, yours are among the best, so if this looks the slightest bit like yours, I take that as an extreme compliment, because that is exactly what I hoped to accomplish. It was just freehand mouse scribbling back and forth across the smoother outline he provided.

Thank you for taking the time to provide such excellent criticisms, I really appreciate such help when I am still trying hard to learn.

[- Max -]

Trees growing closely together do overlap from a somewhat side perspective, is this not pretty natural?

It is but from a drawing point, you wouldn't like to see some transparency on overlapping, whch is waht hapenns on your trees. The overlap only works if the trees aren't transparent but filled with white

I agree about the outer glow. The labels on top of the forests and mountains do in fact have a white outer glow, but clearly it is not strong enough.

I was rather talking about city labels, that don't seem to have any outerglow. This said I would also avoid transparency on forest labels layers. Use solid colors instead.

[Chick]

I see what you mean, and yes you are right about the trees overlap. I'll have to think what to do about that, since I made them into a brush, and the stupid photoshop brushes always have that transparency. Maybe solid black trees ....?

So are you suggesting that labels on top of trees and mountains should have a solid surrounding white to eliminate anything showing through from below? I haven't tried that -- I will, thanks.

[Deadshade]

Rivers do not take the "shortest way to the sea". .

This is extremely right.
Actually even if it varies, there is a conjecture that the ratio "length of a river/distance from source to mouth" is Pi. It has not been proven mathematically (yet) but it is approximately true.
So if the length of your river is less than 3x distance source - mouth then it is not a (statistically) realistic river.
Of course this doesn't apply as well on very small resolutions (say river width = 1 pixel) but it is still a good rule of the thumb.

[Larb]

Rivers do not take the "shortest way to the sea".

Just a little trivia on this regarding the river I live by that I think people might find interesting. The Severn river is about 200 miles long but the source is only about 12 miles from the sea!