WIP - Kalinthros

[Nebula]

Kalinthros, A world where my current pathfinder group is playing within. I tried making them a regional map a week or so ago though that failed in misery. I found I was having a real hard time hand painting in mountains in a realistic style I wanted. The way I draw mountains on paper does not transfer well into digital media. So I went back to the drawing board so to speak and tried to find a style of mapping that I liked and that looked good. So far this is what I found with the help of a few tutorials online and dipping my fingers into the other features of photoshop and illustrator. I have to say, so far I am really loving how its coming out. I have alot of work left to do in the respect of the font I'm using and I'm still looking for a style I want to do the naming in. Also trying to find a way to do a nicely detailed map border and map legend.

This is what came about after two straight days of working on it.

C&C welcome!

Done in Photoshop & Illustrator.
Rose compass done in Illustrator.
*Initial Post*
1150458_10151895437835982_1956373802_o.jpg

*Current Progress*
-Added detail to desert
-Added more snow/ice
-Added more foliage
1293065_10151896730800982_586729112_o.jpg

[Viking]

Nice work! It may be a coincidence but it's always weird to see names I've used also in other maps (Arinthia, Keldor and Parth which are all in my Skenth map in this case). I like what you've done so far even if only for using an unconventional map ratio! I would suggest maybe adding some more details to the desert region. Maybe some "desert concrete" and dunes. My biggest crit would be the river cutting the landmass in half running from Cathia to Freeport. That really doesn't happen in nature. Aside from that some of your rivers could handle a bit of variety in their meandering. I like some of your names, like Winter's Grasp.

[Nebula]

Nice work! It may be a coincidence but it's always weird to see names I've used also in other maps (Arinthia, Keldor and Parth which are all in my Skenth map in this case). I like what you've done so far even if only for using an unconventional map ratio! I would suggest maybe adding some more details to the desert region. Maybe some "desert concrete" and dunes. My biggest crit would be the river cutting the landmass in half running from Cathia to Freeport. That really doesn't happen in nature. Aside from that some of your rivers could handle a bit of variety in their meandering. I like some of your names, like Winter's Grasp.

Thanks for the input! I actually was studying your Skenth map a couple of days back because of loved how you did the heraldry for it, was drawing a lot of inspiration from it, so it most likely isn't coincidence, names get carried over when I study other maps without me noticing at times. I try to give it a best shot of making some names up. Though I could not help but to entertain my pathfinder group with little Lord of the Rings references. The unconventional map ratio was something I really wanted to play with, I was imagining like a rolled up scroll containing the map.

When it comes to naming, I do have a bit of a hard time trying to avoid funky names like "Brown Town" so I tried to go with a more varied approach. What do you think would be a better route, trying to go with a naming convention like "Winter's Grasp"?

That's a good point for the dessert though, I will definitely give that a touch up. Now to the river, I tried my best at making it appear natural, but as you can see it sort of fell short on that aspect. Looking at it again, it doesn't look that great so it's probably a good idea to go back to it and make the adjustments.

I really like this map, I think it's awesome! It's a lot different than a lot of other maps which I like, also your names are cool. The only thing (and I mean the only thing... I looked at your map for a good while just so I could say something that seemed at least a little helpful) that I would think needs some work is that up north it doesn't really look a lot colder it just looks a little of a muddled white and if you could make it look more frozen I think it would add to the map. I really like this map great work!

Thanks for the input, I was having a hard time getting the northern part of the map to look colder then the rest but it began to white everything out to me. I'll definitely go back at trying to freeze the north a bit more and Ill post up the edit for review! Cant help it but, Winter is Coming!

[Domino44]

I really like this map, I think it's awesome! It's a lot different than a lot of other maps which I like, also your names are cool. The only thing (and I mean the only thing... I looked at your map for a good while just so I could say something that seemed at least a little helpful) that I would think needs some work is that up north it doesn't really look a lot colder it just looks a little of a muddled white and if you could make it look more frozen I think it would add to the map. I really like this map great work!

[Eilathen]

Cool map! It is not a regional map, though, is it? Hope to see those regional maps sometime soon

And if you feel like it, care to tell us a bit about this world? As a fellow roleplayer, i'm always curious about the worlds other gamers play in.

Have some Rep.!

[Viking]

Nebula:
Any naming convention can be fine as long as you try to keep things consistent. You can have regional prefixes or endings show up a lot like maybe "Jel","bek","ton","tol", etc. Doing so creates the illusion that these regions have a shared historical culture and language. A real world example would be places ending with land or ton have a good chance of being English, places with berg or burg having Germanic origin and places ending in bad, dad, and bah sound Arabic. Obviously not even most settlements in that area would share that name but linguistic regions have names that sound appropriate with each other. I take great joy in creating original names myself so I try very much to avoid using names from elsewhere or if I do I alter them in a subtle way.