Blueberry Bay

[jeph]

Hi all, first post, thought I'd throw up a map! I've shown this around before on other fora, but it seems appropriate for here.

bbhq.jpg

[- Max -]

Lovely! I like the "childish" touch some rep to welcome you (and that first map with a pretty map)

[jbgibson]

Nice work. Do you ever go back over linework in ink? This would look good more "permanent".

Do I see a river arising in the mountains and splitting to become the western river and settlement river? A river won't join thusly, rather different tributary branches *join*as a river proceeds. Check out the excellent tutorial on Getting Your Rivers in the Right Place in the tutorial forum studying and applying its material will really boost your realism and plausibility.

[Sapiento]

Looks really nice.

[jeph]

Nice work. Do you ever go back over linework in ink? This would look good more "permanent".

I've thought about it, but I'm not exactly sure how I'd go about it here. There's a lot of shading on the map that doesn't come through so well in the scan (which has the brightness and contrast tuned way up to get rid of paper artifacts), three-tone mountains for instance, I'm pretty crap at reproducing that with ink. I think a more serious version would be done with a better set of colored pencils or maybe watercolor, rather than pen.

Or have you tried ink linework + pencil shading before? Is it a nice effect?

Do I see a river arising in the mountains and splitting to become the western river and settlement river? A river won't join thusly, rather different tributary branches *join*as a river proceeds. Check out the excellent tutorial on Getting Your Rivers in the Right Place in the tutorial forum studying and applying its material will really boost your realism and plausibility.

Point of order, rivers splitting, while not exactly rampant, isn't really uncommon either.

River bifurcation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It bugs me when people call real things "unrealistic." The world's a complex place, folks.

[jeph]

Thanks guys!

I haven't tried ink linework with pencil shading before, is it a nice effect?

And point of order, rivers splitting is a thing, if not exactly rampant. It kinda bugs me when people call real phenomena "unrealistic"—the world's a complex and varied place!

River bifurcation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jeff

[Gamerprinter]

True, but river bifurcation is rare - most rivers do not do this. So when a given mapper includes bifurcated rivers - it sends up a red flag. For those of us that understand geology, we can accept anomolies and exceptions that fit in the real world, but most lack this knowledge. So when we see it, we mention it, at least as a teaching tool so people can understand what is anomolous and what isn't.

[jbgibson]

Sure, there can be diverging rivers... But they're like a one-legged man in a story. They're unusual and distracting, unless they're there for a purpose, which the storyteller or mapper probably ought to explain.

I intentionally bent rules of thumb in my recent river contest map - specifically as an exercise in brinksmanship. Say terrain is really, really flat - what is 'downhill' today might not be so tomorrow, by inches, as sediment deposits or driftwood snags. For a river to have such a split personality as to choose to go simultaneously to distant opposite coasts - it makes the geoconscious viewer think "naaaaaah, not so". If you're creating an environment to be atypical and intentionally jarring - more power to you & I'll enjoy figuring out what's happening. If it's just supposed to be an ordinary river though...

It's what I call the principle of least divergence -- an author (artist, whatever) risks wearing out his reader's attention on things not necessary to the plot, if he makes his setting too unique. Rivers go brown in flood, yet the conventional symbology is some bluish color. If the map depicts a flood - go for brown, all-in. If the mapped rivers are shown to depict linear flowing wetness ;-), stick with blue tones. But hey, hereabouts we do fantasy mapping -- floating islands, turtleback worlds, magical vortices, benevolent dictators: all good.

Some mappers honestly don't know that a river generally ;-) won't connect opposite coasts, nor split in a big way, nor cross ridges or valleys. I try to offer improved perception of realism while not being dogmatic -- the above post was doubly sloppy as I even said "won't join thusly" when I meant "won't split thusly". Careless: me. Indeed, my own knee-jerk reaction when told something can't be so is to come up with a way it *could*...

I'll mention another reason to (generally) stick to typical drainage patterns -- topo-oriented people can read the whole lay of the land from the river network, without needing contour lines or hill symbols. If I can't tell for sure which way is down, I'm thrown off.

I like the map. I'm in awe of folks who can get good consistent mountain shapes across the breadth of a page. I find your solution to the difficulty of forest patterns being Too Much Symbology delightful, and the swirly aesthetic matches the swirls in that valley up north. What do those mean, by the way? Good stuff, and I'd love to see more!