Amalga [WIP]

[elemental_elf]

Those look really nice. My only remark would be that the colors are vibrant and so might distract from the map. I'd reccomend toning them down to more subuded pastel colors so that they don't look incongruous on your map.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

I had not considered that... Hmm. How does this look? It is a bit more faded out and less eye popping.

Coats of arms1.jpg

[elemental_elf]

Another update!

This time I faded the grid a bit, added a ton of new towns and castles and restructured some of the political borders to match the fluff I am generating. I also included the first batch of Coats-of-Arms.

amalga_1_7_by_elemental_elf-d4wjy8x.jpg
(LINK TO THE TRUE RESOLUTION OF THE MAP (which is too large for the site to handle)).

[Sapiento]

Huge! Great map so far.

[Lukc]

This is fascinating - and huge. I really like how it's coming along.

A question: what software are you using?

Two comments: 1) are you sure a drop shadow is necessary below the town labels? To my eye it doesn't quite fit - the town labels seem to float, while the country labels are flush against the terrain. I find consistency in design is always a good thing. 2) your rivers have outlines - I don't really see what the purpose is, while it does make the rivers a little bit more visible, it also makes the map seem much busier.. It might be worth trying to see how it looks without the outlines.

[Jahobius]

At first I looked at the smaller resolution attachment and really liked it, but then I clicked the link to the high-res image and was stunned. But I'm not sure whether I like the bevel/emboss effect on the different hight layers. I really like the 2D effect of the low-res image.

[Sapiento]

This is fascinating - and huge. I really like how it's coming along.

A question: what software are you using?

Two comments: 1) are you sure a drop shadow is necessary below the town labels? To my eye it doesn't quite fit - the town labels seem to float, while the country labels are flush against the terrain. I find consistency in design is always a good thing. 2) your rivers have outlines - I don't really see what the purpose is, while it does make the rivers a little bit more visible, it also makes the map seem much busier.. It might be worth trying to see how it looks without the outlines.

I think the outline shall portrait lower terrain around the rivers - that's how I see it. But it could be narrower.

[elemental_elf]

Thank you all for your suggestions, I really appreciate them!

I use Adobe Photoshop CS3 but nothing I am doing could not be accomplished with an older copy of Photoshop.

Here's the latest update, which includes your guy's advice/suggestions. The elevations were made less embossed/raised/elevated. The drop shadows were removed. The River's background was removed. I also created a few new countries, mostly in the upper triangular peninsula which is a mad house of barbarians and miners constantly fighting over large deposits of gold.


amalga__1_8_by_elemental_elf-d4wvm7r.jpg
(LINK TO THE TRUE RESOLUTION OF THE MAP (which is too large for the site to handle)).

[Lalaithion]

Beautiful! This is very good, I love it.

[bartmoss]

Very, very nice! About the only thing I noticed was that the distribution of rivers seemed very uniform.

Have some rep!