Westri – commission

[Lingon]

Thanks Veldehar. If you don't mind, how do you mean they disturb? I was given a very detailed sketch to stick to, and a color scheme, so yeah, it might be that, but i'd still be interested in knowing what you mean if it's anything I can improve on

[Havercakes24]

Beautiful!

[Veldehar]

I know, it's anal... but first, is it really a sea? But of course, any large body of water could be called a sea, there is no hard law, but generally naming convention follows a pattern: Ocean, Sea, Gulf, Bay, and Seas by most standards are salt water. This looks more like a fresh water lake.

Second, calculating the flows of the water by the map is a tad on the peculiar side. River behavior just doesn't quite jibe to the eye.

A river seems to split around Shavenoar, a trait rivers don't really exhibit. And rivers seem to do something similar by Haven and Mistwood. There are also a few nearly "square hits" of merging rivers, with some nicked to avoid a 90 degrees, but close.

But that just my eye on an otherwise very pretty map, LOL. Source material is what it is, and it might have its reasoning, so who's to argue?

[Falconius]

@ Veldehar: "Sea" can be used pretty loosely I think. The Sea of Galilee for instance is a tiny lake up in the mountains, and is fresh water, but for some reason in English it is referred to as sea. Seems comparable to this. That said, I agree with you that technically it doesn't really sit right. Although now I'm also looking at the two major rivers attached to it trying to figure out which way they flow, but they kinda both look like outflow to me for some reason.

I like the softness of these hand painted style maps of yours Lingon. I can sort of notice what is bothering you though, to me it appears to be a clash between the crispness of the labeling and icons and the rest of the map.

[Lingon]

Haha, yeah, I guess it would technically be a lake… But as Falconius says, the borders between all the different names for bodies of water are pretty blurry. The client didn't explain why it's called a sea, but it does have an outlet to the real sea (it's just south of this map), so I guess it's one of those imperfections in naming conventions that make a world feel more authentic

The splitting rivers are actually canals, I tried to show that by making the curves sharper, but maybe that wasn't enough? I'll keep it in mind if I need to do canals again. In Mistwood it's a delta though.

Thanks, guys!

[Ilanthar]

From a scientific point of view (at least, in my opinion), a sea is a body of salted water. A lake is made of fresh water.
It's the main reason and not the size. Therefore, some lakes (lake Michigan for example) are largely bigger than seas (the little dead sea, for example). But, the salt concentration is quite different from one sea/ocean to another, so... sometimes difficult to say, I guess!

[Lingon]

Yeah, the salinity is the deciding factor as far as I'm aware too. Sometimes though, natural features where named before a scientific definition was known to the namers, which is what I meant by "one of those imperfections in naming conventions that make a world feel more authentic". Looking at the map, we can see it's a freshwater lake, but the settlers who first came there might only have heard of the sea as a very large body of water, which the Rainbow Sea is. That's how I explain it to myself anyway, I don't actually know what the thought behind it was