My first mapping project relaunched: Thylis

[Falconius]

You have some misalignment with the map which also causes the words to skew so it's more noticeable there. I'm not sure why it's there, like you had two halves and copied one and moved it up a smidgen or something.

I'm curious as to the terrain features, did you use a stamp from somewhere, or are they of your own creation?

[Kelron]

You have some misalignment with the map which also causes the words to skew so it's more noticeable there. I'm not sure why it's there, like you had two halves and copied one and moved it up a smidgen or something.
...

The misalignments will be gone in the final version, but because this being WIP, I didn`t fix that.

...
I'm curious as to the terrain features, did you use a stamp from somewhere, or are they of your own creation?

I used Campaign Cartographer 3 with the DeRust-Style (from the 2013er September Annual). Unfortunately I don`t have the necessary graphical skills to create terrain of that high quality on my own.

[Stephen Koch]

I really like the map Kelron, its very well done . Since there has been a lot of concentration on the rivers, I like to add in a few comments on them as well.

The mountains in Sinas, and west of Isos seem to be the tallest, and each only have a two rivers flowing from them that join into a larger single river. While your much smaller mountains north of Reshtan have several rivers flowing and joining into at least 2 larger rivers. This is unusual in actual geography. Higher mountains ranges, tend to have many more rivers for a variety of reason. They either trap a lot of water in glaciers or ice caps, which feed continual streams, and creeks, or they create large rain shadows, creating downpours on the coastal side of the range, and dry arid landscapes on the continental side of the range. the Himalayas are a great example of these factors. Another factor affecting rivers is air currents. Take the Waimea Canyon in Kauai, they get at their peaks, on average, 360 days of rainfall per year, accumulating to about 600 inches of rain water per sq. inch. The tiny little island, which has relatively large peaks, has several rivers and dozens of waterfalls. So my suggestion would be to either, change the scale of the mountains north of Reshtan to make them the tallest on the island and scale down the height of the other two mentioned ranges, or to lessen the number of rivers flowing from the mountains north of Reshtan, and increase the number of rivers flowing from the mountains in Sinas and the range west of Isos. This will help give a geological rational to the layout of the map.

Also, you mentioned that this is an Australia-sized continent that is part of a larger world. I would suggest that before you draw out, in detail, the rest of the world, that you draw rough bubble shapes of continental shelves, with the continents themselves superimposed on the shelf bubbles. Then create a simple arrow diagram of continental drift, this will help you immensely in deciding where to place mountains ranges. Doing this will give you an idea as to where continents are pulling apart, and where they are crumpling together.

I hope that this helps you in your map design

Stephen.

[syris]

I really like the style of the mountains you went with...not so much a fan of the way the rivers look, and I'll apologize now if this comes off as being "knit picky" but they seem kind of "smooth" as far as rivers go. And they have a sameness about them...I dunno. That being said, I like a lot more of it than I dislike...I think it has a nice overall layout, coloration, and "flow".

[Kelron]

Thank you very much for your feedback, it`s helpfull and encouraging

The hints about the rivers are great, this will surely help me in making the rivers better.

I tried to get a more handrawn look, how do you like it? Next step for me is to consider how to improve the rivers, seems they are a weak point of mine

And no worries about being "knit picky", I asked for helpfull and honest comments

Thylis-Old Map.jpg

[Kelron]

After my holiday I took care of the rivers again and made the mountains in Reshtan higher. I also added a little more Landmass in the upper right Region (between Krazz `Ot and Sinas) and added some more detail generally.

Are the rivers better looking now? Seems that they are truly my point of weakness

Thylis2.jpg

[lostatsea]

It looks pretty good to me. I really like the buildings ! I don't care for the font much though. Overall very nice ! Have some REP .

[Kelron]

Thank you

I`ve revised the map again and fixed some problems and tried to enhance the visuals. I`ve also taken care of the rivers once more, especially the rivers in the bottom right (Reshtan) were not really visible.

updated version:
Thylis-Desktop.jpg

Version with political borders and sea routes:
Thylis-Political-Desktop.jpg