WIP- Abelav

[hireshmontvellos]

Hello! I'm a new poster here at Cartographers' guild. I've been designing settings for years now for homebrew RPGs, but am now embarking on a new project. I run a history Podcast about migration in America (check it out), and am beginning a new project to do a kind of collaborative storytelling project via Podcast in a fictional setting. I am well into designing that setting, and most of my time has been focused on fleshing out the cultures, languages, economies, population, wars, politics, history, etc. Getting ethnolinguistic-specific fertility/mortality statistics at the regional level for a continent is a technical challenge that I'm enjoying, but is taking some time. For some details on my thinking on the population geography of a Medieval setting, see here.

Aaaaanyways. All that to say, my project will be outward-facing and have an extraordinary level of detail underlying any visualizations. While I have some reasonably good Photoshop cartography skills, I want to do better, and specifically want to make sure that at least some of the visual components to the Podcast will be on par, in terms of quality of production, with the Podcast itself, and with the more data- and story-driven world-development. Whew. Okay. So. I have a map already. Here's one presentation, showing the physical map, as well as a few major regions:

Major Regions.png

I'm using Photoshop, everything is in lots of separate layers that can be edited.

Broadly speaking, I want a better-looking map. I'm open to working from this file, or starting entirely from scratch with a new aesthetic. I would love to be able to produce something like this, or this, or this, or this.

I have time; not intending to really release the project until the autumn. I'm also open to other suggestions on how to make a visually compelling cartographic presentation for the project.

A few notes: the area presented is about 1.8 million square miles, so a bit bigger than the European Union, smaller than Australia, larger than India, etc. Population ranges from 11-16 million people. That should give you a sense of scale/detail. If I were to mark every urban cluster of 10,000 or more on the map (probably won't mark all, but, eh, maybe I will), it would be 30-40 labelled cities. Add in some other marked places and you can run up to maybe 60 marked human settlements. I've then got probably 100-150 general geographic labels for regions, land and water features, etc. If it were possible to make a sufficiently big and high-res map to include all of this in one beautiful piece of cartographic magic, that'd be swell.

So. Would love feedback on how to improve what I'm doing, tips on how to get an aesthetic somewhat like what I've linked to, etc!

[hireshmontvellos]

So, I have started working on a totally new file. Some questions:

1. Is there a good tutorial on how to make a good-looking forested area? I've been looking but nothing I've found quite seems right.
2. Would love to know the steps y'all use to get the sort of mottled/weathered look, like seen here.

[hireshmontvellos]

Of course, on closer inspection it's fairly obvious which one I initially intended, as I deleted the coastal cells from most of the other layers, so deleting the coasts still leaves a kind of odd belt around the sea that, at this point, would be fairly painstaking to fix I guess. But I could probably find some workaround.

[hireshmontvellos]

I've worked up some forests I think look okay, and have also done my best at duplicating some good variation in terrain colors. Still would love advice on boundaries, symbols, etc, texturing the "paper" so to speak, etc. And of course I gotta put tons of labels on here. But I'll also do multiple versions of the map for different purposes.

More immediately, here's a question: which of the two versions below looks better? I can't decide if the more sharply-defined coastlines look good or not. Would love suggestions.
Geog Image 2.jpgGeog Image 1.jpg

[darcycardinal]

I've worked up some forests I think look okay, and have also done my best at duplicating some good variation in terrain colors. Still would love advice on boundaries, symbols, etc, texturing the "paper" so to speak, etc. And of course I gotta put tons of labels on here. But I'll also do multiple versions of the map for different purposes.

More immediately, here's a question: which of the two versions below looks better? I can't decide if the more sharply-defined coastlines look good or not. Would love suggestions.

Hey hireshmontvellos,

This map is clean, clear and already has some great features. I've always loved island maps as you can see everything and seem to be generally easier to create. With the boundries and symbols, how big exactly is this nation and what is the name of the island? the one on the left seems to look better, the dark black lines on the other map seem to pop out a little too much.

BTW, I'm curious to know if you do commission work?

-darcycardinal

[Charerg]

I prefer the second version (the one without the black coast highlights). I think it fits your overall style of "natural colours" better if the coastline transitions smoothly into the ocean, without a clear boundary.

[Josiah VE]

Looks really nice so far! The mountains and forests look great! I also prefer the second one, with this semi-realistic style I don't think the black line fits in.
The forests are a bit blurry around the edges but other than that I really love them!

The weathered look is achieved using parchment textures, one sec, I'll try something.

[hireshmontvellos]

Thanks for the replies! May have to go with the non-outlined one then. That'll involve some work cleaning up the coastlines where a lot of the layers cut out early, but I can probably do that without too much difficulty.

Regarding other comments:
1. Forests: yeah they're blurry around the edges. Really struggled to find a good forest look I liked. Ended up making a green layer in forest areas, rippling it pretty intensely to break up the contours, setting a layer effect, then adding a texture layer and a color cloud layer to vary colors a bit. Overall mostly pleased with it but yeah the ripple effect does have the result of leaving some edges undefined. I think it looks good zoomed out, but on closer looks isn't great.

2. Size-- this continent is 1.74 million square miles, so a bit bigger than the European Union. It's called Abelav.

[Josiah VE]

map 1.jpg

Here, I added a parchment texture to the map. I used a 'multiply' layer with the parchment texture. I hope you don't mind.

[hireshmontvellos]

Wow. I am quite fond of that, and sounds simple. Is the texture preloaded in Photoshop, or can I download it somewhere?