It's been quite a while since I last posted on here, mostly since my last thread got to the point where I was happy with my geology, geography and climates (at least on a worldwide scale), and I turned to doing more worldbuilding things like historical maps. I also switched my master map over to Illustrator, as I finally saw the light and realized that making large-scale, zoomable maps with lots of layers in raster form is a terrible idea.

I'm back now though, as I decided to follow through on my long-time goal of making a presentable physical map. I'm hoping for it to turn into a physical world map with hand-drawn shaded relief, similar to what National Geographic used to do before they went for a more digital style (which is less aesthetically pleasing imo). The only problem is that I have essentially zero experience in doing artistic maps on a computer, or any other kind of art really, so it's quite a steep learning curve. The main inputs are the elevation and climate maps I made in the thread cited above, and making the map means picking decent realistic colors for each climate zone and (this is the hard part) drawing the shaded relief on top of that.

Nonetheless, I'm rather happy with what I've got so far, although I've got quite a ways to go:

Screen Shot 2020-10-31 at 10.41.50 PM.png

And here's the full-size map, less that screenshot trick you into thinking I'm anywhere close to being done:

Pangarap_Relief.jpg

Suggestions are welcome, especially if anyone has experience drawing shaded relief! Especially since I have, and I cannot stress this enough, no idea what I'm doing here.