First Project - Talambar

[Trailsend]

Hey folks!

New to the forum - this is my first shot at a really decent map. It comes from a collaborative world-building project based at a writer's guild I founded.

I combined a few techniques from various tutorials; RobA's "Making Not so Random Coastlines in GIMP" and "Simple Mountains in GIMP," along with Ascension's "atlas" style (and Gidde's translation of it for GIMP) were particularly helpful.

I'm a little worried about the mountains--I didn't really like the look of a single giant mountain ridge running over the face of a continent, so I tried to break it up into a lot of smaller peaks--but I'm afraid the end result might look too crowded. Thoughts?

I really have no idea what I'm doing, so any and all criticism is most welcome. Thanks for your help!

Version 1
Version 2 (Tapered rivers, adjusted labels)
Version 3 (Redid mountains, textured terrain, brightened rivers)

(I still have a lot of labeling of minor features to do, but the major pieces are in place...I think?)


~Trailsend

[tilt]

Hi Trails, looking good, congratulations on your first map. And now for some constructive critisism to get you started. The rivers need some adjustments, a few of them seem to be going up hill/mountains, you need to taper them (ie make them thinner where they start) and try to vary the width of them, a good hint is to have thinners rivers when you begin and then make them wider when they come together.

[Djekspek]

that's a nice map so far. Nice colors and looking very clean and crispy i think. Small comment on the labels: maybe you can make them flow the same direction as much as possible. the label of the mountains is now a bit hard to read as it is flowing the opposite direction of the other labels. cheers!

[Trailsend]

Thanks guys! I've made the suggested modifications; the updated version is here or linked in the first post. Any other comments/crits?

[Gidde]

You may want to try blurring the edges of your mountains in places; the sharp cutoff lines make them look kind of transparent (like by the "yd" in Talmynyd), where in other places they look great.

[tilt]

the river sizes are much better now, but personally I feel they are looking like they lay on top of the land - looking slightly transparant. The mountains are a bit smooth looking comparing to the rest of the terrains, they could use a little roughing up

[Trailsend]

Hello all!

Been forever since I had time to work on this project, but at last, it has been revisited. Thanks for all the pointers!

I've made the rivers more opaque, added some more texturing to the terrain, and redone the mountains with a tweaked method that came out a lot nicer (I think). Any thoughts?

NewTalambar5.jpg

[Ascension]

I think it looks pretty darn cool but the mountains look kind of ethereal...they don't seem to have any substance to them. Maybe put a pattern underneath of them or some more solid colors to "ground" them. The area of the heath has some sort of thing going on that needs to be more smooth and not so angular.

[Trailsend]

Thanks Ascension!

I faded the hills in the Heath, and spread the hillbumps texture over the mountains--better, or would a different texture be better? (I wasn't sure how to change the coloring--what would you suggest for something more solid?)

NewTalambar5.jpg

[Ascension]

Well mainly the mtns should have colors that are not the exact same as the underlying base terrain. This is what is making them look transparent. I'd just throw down a clouds render of say brown and gray and then go back and airbrush the edges to make them blend into the terrain. Transparent edges are okay, helps them blend, but transparent centers makes them ghostly.