Gryphonpike Chronicles World Map

[TheRedEpic]

Hey all Here is a B/w map i just finished as a commission for AnneMarie Buhl, the author of the Gryphonpike Chronicles. Let me known what you think

annie FINAL.jpg

Thanks!
~Jared

[Veldehar]

Excellent work indeed! Some of the rivers seem real funky, but a beautiful style.

[rpgmapmaker]

I like the doted textures and wonderful gray scale. The mountain ranges are excellent! The water lines are an interesting take with the blur... not sure if I like them or not... but the overall look of the map is Top Notch. I am sure the author is pleased. Reped!

[soulnow]

wonderfull work, very beautiful

[Lukc]

The map looks great, but I agree with Veldehar - there's somethin' interestin' happenin' with them thar rivers in the sou'west!

[TheRedEpic]

Hey guys, thanks for the comments I totally agree with the rivers, but this is what the client wanted! If it were my map, these would certainly be in different places! I suspect the river police will pull me over at some point and write me a ticket!

[Jaxilon]

I really like the slight texture you put on the mountains and the dead trees to the north are just cool. Very nice work.

[Troedel]

Very good one. I like the subtle textures on the oceans, making a plain body of water fun to look at.

[jbgibson]

Pull you over, yes, but write you a ticket, no. You get off with a polite warning, because you exercised due diligence and tried to get the rivers placed better... it's a commission and the customer is always right :-). My mental copy is already marked with the little tic-marks beside watercourses that are sometimes used to symbolize canals -- the skinny bits of all three of those unnatural second-ocean-connection rivers are just canals. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. I'd be more inclined to ding you for how the northern outlet of Shard Lake doesn't actually connect to the river there :-).

Maybe we need a concise explanation of why certain geographic elements just look WrOnG to an experienced eye - rivers are but the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. Magical rhetoric that convinces any author of The Better Way that lies at their fingertips. And to that kind of wishing, my daughter grins and says "yeah, Daddy, and I want a pony".

Heck, I'd be inclined to give the geophysical errors a pass anyway, just because the whole map is so purty. I like everything you've done - individual elements are great, and they hang together marvelously. One thing I'm not sure I understand - are the jaggy lines in the north meant to symbolize a literally frozen plain, all cracked and fissured? If so, should the crack-marks maybe stay in the plain and not run up on the mountains at all?

What do the three circles mean? Or do I need to read the book to know? :-)

Hmmmm- is this for reproduction at small size in a book? If so, I bet you could gain legibility by paying more attention to keeping labels away from graphical elements. Can't do that everywhere, without undue contortion, but it wouldn't hurt labels like Loredge, Vert, and Blackwald to avoid the coastline by a few pixels. Same for Amaitiri. You wisely broke the hard edge of coastline at places like Glassnesse and Caslyn - you're pretty stuck on placement for those and some others. Since you're stuck with Strongviolet's spot, you could maybe break the coastline under it for legibility's sake. But labels like Fin could be outright moved - there's room on the other side of the river there so it wouldn't have to overlay hill symbols. Again a particular issue for small reproduction - the font is pretty, well defines a desired period, and is mostly legible... but the G is weak. I wonder if you could manually add a few pixels of stroke to the G descender, to better distinguish it from a C? Not that people can't figure it out, but one doesn't WANT readers to have to puzzle over an illustration - it ought to speak clearly without mumbling :-).

Is the BLANDO at the bottom right a signature, or a label? It's so near the city-label size that it looks like one. If it's a signature, could you get away with turning it 90 degrees and putting it against the side at that corner instead of the bottom?

What are the two white artifacts in the Broken Isles? They look like just missing tint.

I like this map a lot. Ignore everything I asked, and it's still a favorite!

[Gidde]

Gorgeous! And for what it's worth, it passes the viewed-on-the-phone test (important to folks like me who love their ebooks!)