First map ever, feedback would be appreciated

[EnlightenedAlcoholic]

Hello everyone, this is the first map I've ever created. I hate how small it looks, the colours, the bad editing and pretty much everything but hey, gotta start somewhere. It's made in Inkarnate and (badly) edited in photoshop, I wanted to see if I could get a realistic looking map before trying to make it look good. I'm fairly content about the different biomes and only see a problem with the icy plains (which I just now noticed isn't on the list of biomes) being so close to a dense forest. If you find weird things on this map I'd really like to know, I'm going for a mostly realistic map for a fantasy world.

So a little bit about the world itself. It's an large (magical) island that's inhabited by small tribes of different ancient druidic humanoids. It's going to be explored by my DND group and they're supposed to explore it for the next couple of months. The fact that it has so many different biomes is because it has to be interesting and be home to many different types of creatures.

Honestly I feel kinda bad posting this crappy map here. I've seen so many awesome maps on here that this one feels even worse by comparison. I'll probably be redrawing the whole thing in just photoshop after I've gotten some feedback on here. Inkarnate was really nice to figure out the general shape of the map I wanted and getting the general idea out but was incredibly restraining later on. I really need to find a better way to create a sense of height so I guess I'm going to need to learn how to draw that.

Enough rambling, here's the map.
vyelgjipwm7z.png

[ChristosLegacy]

Hey, EnlightenedAlcoholic I see that you are new to creating maps. So am I, so I can not really give you a professional opinion.
But, I like your story a lot. Since you map has a swamp, I am all for it.

I would recommend you reading the guide made by Kindari here: https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ad.php?t=18643
Its an easy guide to create maps with PS. At least its good to teach you a trick or two.

[Mouse]

Wow! Looks like you're trying to fit a whole planet of different things onto one continent. Crazy, but entertaining

I don't know much about Inkarnate (I use CC3 and GIMP mainly), so I'm not the one to compare it to any kind of standard, but for a first map that you say you don't really like, its really pretty good

I particularly like that you haven't forced the ocean to be blue, but allowed it to harmonize more easily with the colours of your land. Too many oceans are bright blue, no matter how much that clashes with whatever is going on with the land. You've got a pleasing sort of Purple and yellow/green thing going on there.

[EnlightenedAlcoholic]

Yeah, I really want a lot of things on this one island to keep things interesting. It's kinda crazy but I think I can pull it off without it looking too strange after a few more edits. I'll probably change the ice part and make it a separate island that's a bit more to the north. I also feel like the jungle part should be somewhere else to make a bit more sense heat/humidity wise but I don't know how.

I actually put a yellow filter over the map so the colours clash a little less so you noticed correctly!