[WIP] Makaiyoto

[DanielHasenbos]

It has been a long since I posted anything on here. I have been working on yet another map (I can't seem to finish a project before starting a new one ;P) and wanted to share what I have got so far.

Makaiyoto [WIP].jpg

For my birthday my girlfriend gave me an atlas of Gerard Mercator: 'Atlas sive Cosmographicae Meditationes de Fabrica Mundi et Fabrica Figura' (it's really cool and I really encourage any member of this forum to check it out!) and this map is greatly inspired by those maps. The map itself was done fairly quickly but I kind of lost myself is placing the towns and about 90% of the time put into this map was spend on labels ;P
I'm also working on a detailed history for the lands in this map which I will share in the finished map thread if it ever comes to that.

Any comment, critique and feedback is welcome!

-Dan

[Warlin]

The amont of labels is incredible! How do you manage to chose all of them ? There is no place for nothing else

[J.Edward]

My, that is label insanity.
I would have stopped after the first 100.
Quite impressive sir.

[ChickPea]

Firstly, thanks for the tip about the book. I've been looking at old maps too (mostly Blaeu and Speed) and they're fantastic.

I like what you've done but I can't help but feel you've gone a wee bit too far with the labelling (sorry!) It's not entirely the quantity of them, either. It's more that they're fairly evenly dispersed throughout the map, which doesn't feel quite natural. I think that if you emptied a few areas and left them completely blank, and perhaps bunched up a few of the towns into clusters in a few places, it would feel more authentic.

But ultimately, I have to give you kudos for sticking with it. Labelling is fun and you've chosen some good fonts, and the land border colours feel authentic for the older style you were emulating. I hope you'll work on it a little more.

[Pixie]

Nice map or great starting point. I'm sure you have devoted a terrifying number of hours into this map, because of all the labeling in it. However, I need to second ChickPea's main comment - the map is too repetitive because town placement is so even. I have recently come across this map, which resembles yours in style, and I went for a second look so I could comment on your own creation. The main difference, to my eyes, is that rivers and significant mountains are strongly marked, whereas in your case, rivers are there but nearly invisible.

Darker rivers and coastline, a little more variation in towns density and some decorations over the sea would make this great, imho!

[DanielHasenbos]

The amont of labels is incredible! How do you manage to chose all of them ? There is no place for nothing else

Thanks Warlin! I find it relatively easy to come up with names for the towns and cities. I just decide what sort of language I want for a region. In this case something that sounded Japanese/Chinese to me with a little of my own. After that I just jibber-jabber in a fitting 'language' and the words that I come up with end up being the town and city names.

My, that is label insanity.
I would have stopped after the first 100.
Quite impressive sir.

Thanks J.Edward! Yes, it is indeed an insane amount of labels and I'm glad that I'm practically done with them!

Firstly, thanks for the tip about the book. I've been looking at old maps too (mostly Blaeu and Speed) and they're fantastic.

I like what you've done but I can't help but feel you've gone a wee bit too far with the labelling (sorry!) It's not entirely the quantity of them, either. It's more that they're fairly evenly dispersed throughout the map, which doesn't feel quite natural. I think that if you emptied a few areas and left them completely blank, and perhaps bunched up a few of the towns into clusters in a few places, it would feel more authentic.

But ultimately, I have to give you kudos for sticking with it. Labelling is fun and you've chosen some good fonts, and the land border colours feel authentic for the older style you were emulating. I hope you'll work on it a little more.

Thanks for the feedback ChickPea and I'm happy to share the atlas here; it's a great source of inspiration for me! I understand what you say about the towns and cities are too evenly spread. I aimed for a map that represented every city, town, village and hamlet in this world, but I guess I have gone to far with it. I could remove a lot of labels in places where there should be mountains and hills. I kind of used the labels as an excuse not to show those because I find it terrible to draw them with a computer mouse. I suppose I'll just have to accept that it has to be done (:

Nice map or great starting point. I'm sure you have devoted a terrifying number of hours into this map, because of all the labeling in it. However, I need to second ChickPea's main comment - the map is too repetitive because town placement is so even. I have recently come across this map, which resembles yours in style, and I went for a second look so I could comment on your own creation. The main difference, to my eyes, is that rivers and significant mountains are strongly marked, whereas in your case, rivers are there but nearly invisible.

Darker rivers and coastline, a little more variation in towns density and some decorations over the sea would make this great, imho!

Thanks Pixie, you always seem to give the feedback I need! ;P I believe the map you referred to looks a lot like the maps I use for inspiration. Darkening the coastline and rivers is indeed a good idea and I'm definitely going to try it out.

-Dan

[Durakken]

Pixie's map has a few differences more than what he said...

Main cities are marked
The Town placement is not evenly distributed but rather they mark out roads and the clutter is from the names, not the towns
The Borders are thicker and more graded obviously, but theres also a stroke right on the edge of them
The rivers are darker and you can easily figure out that there are several basins your dealing with where as yours I can't figure out where the rivers starts or what basin their in even though there should be several.

As far as the naming of your towns... I'm not going to read all those, but doing what you described unless you are a idiot savant with regards to names will lead to the names not looking right so I'd be careful in that regard.

[DanielHasenbos]

First of all I'd like to say that I'm using Mercator's map as inspiration and am not trying to duplicate his maps, so I'm aware that there are some differences.

As far as the naming of your towns... I'm not going to read all those, but doing what you described unless you are a idiot savant with regards to names will lead to the names not looking right so I'd be careful in that regard.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean with this, do you have any other way to do this?

-Dan

[Durakken]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean with this, do you have any other way to do this?

A naming language

It's fairly easy if you're not obsessive about it.
Here's a guide http://www.lacerta.conlang.org/stuff...20Language.pdf

[DanielHasenbos]

A naming language

It's fairly easy if you're not obsessive about it.
Here's a guide http://www.lacerta.conlang.org/stuff...20Language.pdf

Sorry for the very late response but thanks for the link Durakken! I have read it through quickly and it will certainly come in handy if I spend some time on it!

-Dan