[WIP] My First Map

[Deadshade]

can you explain more about mountain ranges or rivers? its so hard for me...


!

Well it depends on what your intent is.
If your intent is to map a magical world where anything goes, then you have no rules and can do whatever you want.
However if your intent is to do a realistic world, e.g one that looks like the reality we know, then you have a few rules that must be followed.
Lakes can have only 1 outlet, rivers always flow downhill, never separate unless in deltas or around a small river island.
Mountain ranges are created by tectonic forces and these make basically sure that mountain ranges are along continental plate boundaries and look like parallel folds in a carpet that you push with the hand. There are no ranges branching off in right angles.
There may be other (much older) mountains elsewhere which have a different orientation than the high young ranges but they are lower and far.

If you are interested there is much useful information in the tutorial section. Both for realistic and irrealistic settings.

[Freodin]

Well this is not a good example.
As I happen to have been born in Bohemia, your link is rather an example of a very realistic map where the mountains and everything else are on the right places.
A realistic Bohemia looks like a diamond with mountains and hills on all 4 sides and that is among others the reason why it created a natural frontier between the old slavic and germanic worlds with only a few enclaves for this or that historical reason.
Even the only gap in the mountains through which flows the Elbe river into Germany is accurately positionned.
Same for the Carpathian mountains which accurately start only in Slovakia. Etc.
The only very minor comment would be that the "altitudes" seem incorrectly be the same but as obviously this was not the author's concern, I would certainly not reproach him that.

Well, I happen to live just outside of that Bohemian "diamond"... perhaps I could have a bigger beef with Ortelius: he left out all of the German low mountain ranges.

You are right with the "realism" here: he got it about right. He described what was there. We know how it is and that it is real... that is why we don't question it. But you also said: "Mountains (almost) never ... describe semi circular shapes."

Well, here they do! And look at the Dinaric Alps and the greek and balkan highlands... mountains that branch off at right angles! And, these are depicted quite unrealistically.
(While you are at it: check out his rivers. Especially what he did to the eastern european rivers. Here on this forum, the River Police would go into riot mode!)

All these are "real" in the sense that Greece is not really flatland, the Alps are not lined up north-south and Bohemia is not situated on top of a mountain chain.

What you talked about is consistency and not realismus.
A map or a picture can be consistent but utterly irrealistic.
Realistic means "that what represents things as they really are". And as we know only one reality, there is no ambiguity about what that means.
Representing a square moon or an upward flowing river can be done but is definitely not representing the things as they really are.
Mountains can be whatever one wants when one puts irrealistic magical forces in play and despite being consistent with those magical forces, they will still stay irrealistic.
That's why I added in my comment "even in a slightly realistic setting" to make sure that my comment is understood as applying only to realistic settings.

If the setting was not meant to be realistic then the comment despite being correct would be obviously irrelevant.

And here I disagree: if we didn't have the direct comparison between Ortelius' map and "the real world"... his depiction would be "not realistic". Only because we can compare these two can we say: ah, this is what he ment... even if it is highly abstracted. (Or, in case of his messed up rivers: ah, he just didn't have the info... he simply guessed and didn't care about the physics.)

Now even if we assume that the same geological forces that formed our earth made this "fantasy world"... we can see that these forces can produce a lot of formations that some people might depict in a way that seems to be "unrealistic". But without being able to compare the map and the underlying "reality", you just cannot tell what is "realistic" and what is not. You simply do not have the basis to do so.

[Deadshade]

But without being able to compare the map and the underlying "reality", you just cannot tell what is "realistic" and what is not. You simply do not have the basis to do so.

I have of course every basis to tell realistic from irrealistic because I, like every other person, am able to compare a representation with the reality.
That was the whole purpose of my initial comment. As it is not clear what is your point ( impose your own definition of realistic that you write "realistic" ?), arguing about semantics certainly doesn't help the OP who was asking for feed back on his map.
I give mine, you give yours and I'd rather stop at that.

[Freodin]

Well, yes, you are right... at least in the point that this question goes way beyond the scope of such a thread.

Maybe I should raise this question in a general thread.