Fantasy World Map

[Diamond]

This is looking very very nice, man. I like that mountain technique; it's very similar to the one I use sometimes. I didn't really have a problem with the double graticule, but it honestly looks fine to me either way.

[Raptori]

Yeah the mountains are really simple - just a slight tweak to some of the styles a load of people use - but I think they work well on this

The polar graticule isn't straight actually, it's traced directly from a G.Projector image centred on the city. I've added a line to the screenshot below so you can see the difference - the curve isn't very obvious unless there's a straight line next to it

graticule-curvature.jpg

I actually tried to put a bit of contrast between the two graticules, but they were both so light that it didn't really work in the end. The polar one was half the width and half the opacity of the other one, but it was hard to tell to be honest. When I made one of them dark enough for the contrast to be visible, the light one was barely noticeable and the dark one took too much precedence over the map for my liking. I'll leave it off for now, then after I've added most of the labels and stuff I'll try to find a way to put it back in without affecting the rest of the map.

Very good point on the shape of the river Lingon, just had a look at some satellite photos of rivers and it's very different to what really happens. I think I'll wait to use my tablet for that, I can finally have it back when the new monitor arrives in a week or so

I'm treating the labelling as if it's part of an infographic, since that's effectively what a map is, right? The more important the item is for the users of the map, the darker and larger the text should be. You're right about the Aestura label, I was thinking it'd look better once several other country names had been added, but now that you mention it I realised that actually it made no sense to make those so dark when the map is supposedly for traders. Cities, coasts and rivers are the most important elements for that use case, so I've removed the shadow and lightened the text

Thanks for the comments everyone, really helps me work out what I actually want the map to do. I guess the next step is to come up with some more names for things!

[Pixie]

I think I will use this exact technique for mountains, at some point. Many thanks for it, Raptori.

As for the map, it is looking great (but I agree with Lingon about that river, it should be more random).

Waiting on a richly labeled map now. Good luck with name-making

[Ilanthar]

Very cool mountains! Thanks for sharing your method. Honestly, your fantasy world is more and more interesting! I would love to see a continent at this stage.

I probably just don't remember (sorry for that ), but you intend to do political or atlas kind of maps, right?

[Raptori]

I think I will use this exact technique for mountains, at some point. Many thanks for it, Raptori.

As for the map, it is looking great (but I agree with Lingon about that river, it should be more random).

Waiting on a richly labeled map now. Good luck with name-making

Cool, it'll be nice to see what you do with it!

Lol it's taking me forever to come up with names for places... I think I've only done about 20 more so far, which barely covers one tiny area of the map - the bay around that main city. I'll be a bit busy for the next few weeks with other stuff so I won't have much time to work on this as well, so it'll probably be some time before the next update

Very cool mountains! Thanks for sharing your method. Honestly, your fantasy world is more and more interesting! I would love to see a continent at this stage.

I probably just don't remember (sorry for that ), but you intend to do political or atlas kind of maps, right?

Thanks! Not 100% sure about what maps I'll be making to be honest. The initial map (the one from a few pages ago that I've paused for the moment) was really just me setting up the geography of the world so it makes sense, and providing something to use on Google Earth for measurements. The new map is there to add some of the geographical detail I'll need for one of the key areas, though I'm having fun trying to make it look nice at the same time! Most of the time I've had free to spend on this so far has gone into working out the background story so I can start to work out a series of plots, the map-making is both for clarity and for fun

[Raptori]

Haven't spent a single minute on this since I last posted, but I realised I hadn't posted a picture of the labeling so far. There are a few labels that are off the edge of the cropped area, but the image below shows the majority of the ones I've added. The faint lines are rough guidelines for some rivers I'll add in at some point. Large circle = city (which are either a city state or a state capital), medium circle = town, dot = important village.

I'm not sure how dense I should make the labeling... So far I've been only adding locations that would be of interest to a trader, to reflect the purpose of the map, but when comparing the settlement density to the scale there it looks very sparsely populated. Should I carry on marking only important locations, at this kind of density, or should I try to cram in more detail (and give myself a further mountain of naming!)?

labels.jpg

[Diamond]

That's looking pretty good! If it were me, I think I'd leave the settlement density where you've got it, but add in things like roads, important sites (mountain peaks, shrines, fortresses, ruins, etc) to help fill things out. That way you get a lot of world-detail/depth, and you don't have to go into quite so much naming detail.

As far as the labels themselves, I can't say I'm a huge fan of the way you've got them overlapping the coasts. In some places you clearly have to, like with Porto Saxeo, but with others, like Paculeto, why not just move them up or down a few pixels?

[JefBT]

The heightmap fascinate me. *o*

[Raptori]

That's looking pretty good! If it were me, I think I'd leave the settlement density where you've got it, but add in things like roads, important sites (mountain peaks, shrines, fortresses, ruins, etc) to help fill things out. That way you get a lot of world-detail/depth, and you don't have to go into quite so much naming detail.

Thanks, I'll carry on as is then

As far as the labels themselves, I can't say I'm a huge fan of the way you've got them overlapping the coasts. In some places you clearly have to, like with Porto Saxeo, but with others, like Paculeto, why not just move them up or down a few pixels?

Good point. At the moment I just have them all centred on the meridian of the location without thinking about anything underneath. I'll definitely go back and fix that as much as possible