WIP: Efrea

[Raven1138]

This is my fist map submitted to this forum
test.jpg
I am happy with the mountains, but I'm wondering of i might have overdone it with the lakes.
The island is about the size of Great Britain.

I have yet to add cities, refine the boarders a bit and add roads.

[jbgibson]

Nice start! I don't think that is too many lakes - but a few of them don't exactly match the terrain; not seeming to be at the lowest point nearby.

When you are drawing solid shapes by filling in or scribbling with a pen or brush, you get a more random edge when you use several different sizes, and when you chew away at the shape with an eraser as well as building up with pen - that'll give you convex as well as concave coastlines. Right now the coastline has an unusually large number of same-sized outward bumps. Nice job generating the mountains - I have to figure out how to do that one day.

I understand why the lakes need to be dark - the low contrast between your light green land and light blue water would make lakes the same color as the sea almost disappear. Maybe you could give all the water a subtle dark rim, a pixel or less, and go lighter with the lakes? It is a style bordering on photorealistic so you may not be wanting artificial 'drawn' looking coastlines... But you're putting borders and roads on the map so there is going to be some human-made line work no matter what. See if you like a bit of a coastline - most software lets you 'find edges' or 'expand selection' or 'outer/inner glow' so it shouldn't be too tricky.

By 'refine borders' do you mean a different linestyle, or tweaking their alignment?

[Raven1138]

A quick update, sorry, been busy with work and other things.
Thanks for the feedback. I totally agree, after reviewing that some of the lakes should have been placed differently. I've also reworked the coastline after your input.
I redid a lot of work, and also changed the look of the map.

I should give credit to waldronate for the mountains as they are generated by his excellent program Wilbur (which i spent far to much time with!!)


My vision is to get a "detailed painting" look.
jKHbSHp.jpg

[Raven1138]

test2.jpg

Another update:
I further refined my coastline, added elevation lines and started naming cities and regions.

[Robulous]

Nice start, I'd suggest shading the uplands in different colours though.