My Map and need advice

[pyrandon]

I think for a geography map intended to convey the terrain, this is coming along wonderfully. Is that the intention of the map?

I'm not sure on the scale of this "island", but are there enough rivers to be realistic? Also, from what I'm seeing, this is a very rocky place; although green, I imagine not many lush fields, plains, or praries; is that correct?

I would also make sure to add some eye-interest to the oceans, too. Is that in your plan?

Coming along well! Keep it up!

[Yandor]

of this map yes, I am trying to convey the terrain, later I'm planning on converting the map into actual forests, jungles, deserts etc.

I was thinking the same thing with this map too, the scale on it will be fairly large, like the island is the size of the USA. However I was just thinking that maybe I can just have the main rivers show on this map (I mean literally the main rivers, just the mississippi, and ohio rivers, type deal, no tributaries but just the bulk of the river, good idea or bad idea?). As for the mostly mountain regions, I'm hoping to flatten most of it, but I was trying to get my rivers in (that actually followed the contours of the map) and then go back in and flatten some of it out, not to the extend of the river level but close enough, like any major river valley.

Eventually yes, I'm not sure how to go about it yet, ocean isn't part of my worry but I had the light blue to dark blue, on those other maps, and gameprinter said the light blue was too light, so I took it as a distraction and junked it for now.

Thanks for the quick feed back Pyrandon

[Yandor]

hmm so I went back in and calculated a bunch of things, I was planning on have the map be like the earth's northern hemisphere, what I kind of forgot is as you go farther norther the diameter gets smaller making the circumference smaller, so having that island be the size of the USA, would make the larger islands to the north be the size of Canada or most of Asia, and well having 3 or 4 Canada size Islands near the norther pole doesn't logically fit =D so, that Island I showed may be the size of India? or like United Kingdom...

Edit: yeah screw the whole idea with it just being just north america (I was hoping to make 2 mapes 1 north and 1 south hemisphere, but I'm thinking that wont work, so I'll get back to you once I figure it out =D

[Yandor]

so I tried to flatten it out to create more of a Valley, or flat lands, plains etc I don't know if I personally like the effect so far, but what do you guys think?

First photo is the original with no touch up
Second photo is the after touch up - I don't like the way I did the rivers connecting to the mountains so I'll be fixing that

Any comments are welcome!

[ravells]

I think the general shape of the island is looking wonderful.

I think you might need more subtlety in the gradations of colour and to desaturate all the colours somewhat. There's a really loud flourescent green which is very distracting (imo).

I'm not sure why but there's been a recent shift in the Guild to this style of map!

(I blame Pyrandon, RobA and Torq!).

[RobA]

(I blame Pyrandon, RobA and Torq!).

I blame my lack of artistic talent that prevents me from actually drawing

-Rob A>

[Yandor]

Thanks ravells, I was getting to that conclusion too, I've got my map sitting as my background, so I just sit and stare when I am "stuck" on what to do, and yeah the color is a bit bright, so I'll see what I can do, and I agree with Rob, its a lack of artistic talent =D

[landorl]

Overall, I like the map, but the main river doesn't look like it works. Either it is flowing in two different directions... towards the lake and towards the sea, or else it has to flow uphill from the lake, because it looks like the lake is in a coastal plain, and then the river goes into the mountains.

As for the colors, I like them, and think that they work pretty well.

[The Cartographist]

Beautiful map, Yandor. Nice to see how it has come along over time with feedback from the group. I'll add two cents, which I'll probably add every time I see a new map with oceans until everyone just tells me to shut up.

You might want to use different levels of shading to indicate various depths of water. Typically, the deeper the shade of blue, the deeper the water. One example is here: http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-map...raphy-map.html

I personally think that this makes a map look better than when not done, and it shows that world creators are working to make their worlds even more realistic.

[Yandor]

thanks everyone, and to answer questions

Iandorl - I wasn't sure how to really do that river, to be honest I just followed the contours of my map when I had them before the rivers like in this picture I posted earlier
http://www.cartographersguild.com/at...4&d=1195270898
So I just worked from there to make the rivers, I'm thinking I'll need to do something to make it more realistic, but I was just using the idea of the river was eating down the top of the mountain and it finally broke threw a lower place and eventually divided the river into 2 streams thus the fork, and why one continues along the mountains and the other drops down into the lake, but yeah this was a sort of test map to see if it looked better then before...

The Cartographist - hehe I fully agree on the different depths, but it takes that much longer to load the image (its like 4200 x 2100 it just kept growing ) Anyways if you click the link above when I was responding to Iandorl, I've got the depths in, its just I need to turn it on, instead of it hidden...

Thanks everyone, I'll be posting more updates soon when I get a little more time to mess with it...