The Golden Sands, Redux!

[msa]

Well, I decided to take on two mapping projects, both larger in scale than any I've done before. Stupid me! I'll be plugging away on this one slowly but surely, but I wanted to get some feedback on it.

I'm converting the map that won me the lite challenge over from a realistic-style map over to a hand drawn one. So far I've only managed the coastlines, rivers, and a small section of mountains. This is meant to be printed on an 8.5x11 sheet of paper--I'd like a version that I can print and give to players during the game.

My main question is the mountains: do they look ok? They are sort of like some styles I've seen, but deviated from them a lot. I've intentionally made them evocative of pyramids and sand dunes to mesh with the arabia/egyptian feel of the world. I also decided to shade the valleys instead of doing a more natural lighting source, but I'm not sure I like it. An alternative would be to shade them as if the light was coming from the northeast.

For comparison, here is the original map:

http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=5622

The hand-drawn version is a *lot* more time consuming so I am hoping for some feedback before I go too far down a bad path.

[Steel General]

They look fine to me...

[LamilLerran]

I think with this style of map shading the valleys is better than shading from a light source. I feel like my eye expects symbols more than it expects realistic images, and so I prefer the shading of the mountains to be consistent.

Also, in some sense, there is a fixed light source in this version: the light is coming from "behind" all the mountains (i.e., from beneath the paper).

Oh, and I think the overall style of the mountains is good too. I like the concave sweeps of their ridges.

[Ascension]

Yep, looks fine to me as well. The hard part will be getting everything to mesh well with that very bold and stylish type of mountain with the big sweeping ridgeline. Keeping that style consistent will be the hard part, actually doing all of the drawing is the long part Good luck and good stuff so far.

[msa]

Thanks for the feedback on my mountain shading--I thought it would actually be more clear and look better to shade the valleys. Although it wasn't nearly as well formed in my mind, that comment about symbolic representation vs. realistic representation was exactly my logic. I still lack the experience or confidence to be sure of these sorts of decisions, so its nice to hear from someone else.

The hard part will be getting everything to mesh well with that very bold and stylish type of mountain with the big sweeping ridgeline.

I'm beginning to see that! Its actually a whole lot harder to do a hand-drawn map than I expected! Particularly if you want it to look good in black and white. I never really thought about how much extra information color can convey until I had to make do without!

[Ascension]

That might be a good idea for a challenge....B&W.

[AslanC]

Very good stuff... I love black and white hand drawn maps... like at the start of fantasy novels.

[Coyotemax]

that is great. Absolutely nothing wrong with those forests, in faced I'm so impressed with the way you managed to convey forest covered hill/mountains I'mm keeping this pic around for reference. Brilliant.

[Steel General]

Looks good to me so far...

[Will Phillips]

My only suggestion would be that in some places, the top/side edges of the forest come too close to a river or shoreline and so from far away look either thick or smudged.

I think the largest of the three small islands looks really good - you might want to go that direction and let the edges of your forest double as the shoreline and give your rivers some more room to breath.

Other than that, I'm really digging the style you've got going on with this one.