Faladriand - a large work in progress.

[tatteredglyph]

My first post about a map! I'm excited to start my journey here, as I see the community offers actual feedback (something I struggle with on other platforms - not many people offer feedback and critique). So, without rambling too much, let's get into my map.

This world is called "Faladriand." The name was actually a randomly generated name from a website (I kinda suck at making up names on my own), and I loved the name - so I kept it. So, this isn't so much a "high fantasy" world so much as it's just heavily fantasy. I have Gods/Goddesses, as well as several different fantasy species. (Eh, species / races if you want to get technical? Most of them are they're own species, while having sub-categories for races within themselves.) I'm currently working on a more accurate descriptor for my world, but for now the umbrella "fantasy" will have to work.

Now onto the actual map!

faladriand - wip (1).jpg
(Created in Photoshop CS5, all textures and patterns are presets.)

This map was primarily a "test" piece, but I do like the style in which I did it in. I feel I know my main problems: spatial awareness and rivers. To be completely honest, I don't know what to do with rivers, especially on large landmasses, so I kinda just planed them randomly. Please don't hesitate to call out my poorly placed rivers. I looked at a few tutorials on the forum about river placement and it kinda went over my head. So I gave it my best try. I did at least try to think of proper placement, but I'm sure I still got something wrong.

I'm not sure what happened with that thin landmass on the left. It's so thin, it's probably the size of Rhode Island in length (at least, that's how it seems). I had no concept of size when I was making that, and everything is too close together. I did like my initial landmasses, however.

faladriand - wip (2).jpg
(Created in Photoshop CS5, all textures and patterns are presets.)

So, this was the second-ish attempt to fix what I knew was wrong. I didn't change the landmasses, but I did give the land "breathing room" on the map. However, I'm still unsure of how large any of this actually is. It's something I'm having trouble with - sizing. That said, aside from the breathing room I didn't change much else. I'm still playing around with this style and making it lag less in Photoshop. (The file size is huge and slows down my computer, so I have to work on this in pieces.)

This particular version may under go a lot of revisions, as I'm going to be placing cities, towns, etc. I don't know exactly how I'm going to be placing roads and the like down. I also plan on putting in ship routes in the water to indicate trade via the land landmasses.

faladriand - wip (3).jpg
(Created in Photoshop CS5; brush sets are as follows:
StarRaven's Cartography Brushes.
StarRaven's Calligraphic Brushes.
Eragon's Cartography Brushes.)

This version is probably my worst. I was playing around with styles because I found a tutorial that had this sort of style. I tried to play with it, but I find it ugly when I do it. My issue with this is there's too much blank area on the map. Whereas my previous map had no issue due to the textures I applied. The desert on the middle landmass is poorly places and the rivers are poorly done. I desert seems "barren" and I haven't a clue how to fill in all the blank space.


All-in-all this is an interesting process. I might "combine" both maps and use the first map's style for future projects. It just looks better in my opinion. That said, I'm probably going to continue moving forward with map #2 and tweak things.

Any and all critique is welcome! And, I realize the rivers are seriously poorly done. Any critique on how to correct them is welcome (I know there's the "river police", go easy on me, though. I did at least try my best.) I'm looking forward to feedback and to implement the changes. Thank you for reading this long-winded post!

***** LATEST WORK IN PROGRESS ****
faladriand - wip (4b7).jpg