Zasháve is the largest continent of my fictional planet of Askath, and is the home of my main conlang, Gomain (further information here). Covering an area of over 17.5 million square miles, it's home to a large variety of climates and cultures. It's my intention to make a series of maps of the continent and its subregions, but for now, I'm focusing on improving its terrain.

When I made the first map of Zasháve, I followed Mark Rosenfelder's map-drawing tips (here), but I'm not terribly satisfied with how realistic the mountains look (especially since my hand-drawn shading isn't totally consistent in its shadow directions). To remedy this issue, I'm following mbartelsm's "Realistic Mountains with Photoshop and Wilbur" tutorial, though with ten elevation levels instead of four, and adding a base height level to preserve the coastlines. As part of this effort, I've already updated the hills to get the lighting on them consistent, though they'll inevitably turn out differently after I run the finished heightmap through Wilbur. I also want to replace the current terrain colors (also hand-painted in Photoshop) with a series of gradient maps, based on what I've read in a number of tutorials that make use of them.

With all that said, here are the two maps I've made so far. The first is a physical map that attempts to color the different climates realistically while keeping them distinct. The second, which I just exported tonight, is a linguistic map. Both thumbnails below link to the full-resolution maps (which are frickinhuge PNGs and therefore not suitable for direct display here).