First attempt, Ziemia

[daxdeathstrike]

Hallo!
This was my first attempt at digital mapmaking. I followed Gidde's awesome tutorial http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...ad.php?t=10655 and made this, based on an old fantasy map my brother drew years ago. There was supposed to be another, larger river and another lake, but to be honest my eyes glazed over a bit as I followed the tutorial. That's not a reflection on the tutorial, mind you: it just has so much fantastic information that my mind exploded a little bit. I'm going to redo this, and we'll see how the second attempt looks. Thanks all!This is the United Country of Ziemia, based on a story by Logan Malcome. Advice welcome!
map.jpg

[kimni]

Hi, I think your map is great, especially for a first attempt.
I'm relatively new to mapmaking, but there's a few things I noticed. Curved lables often look a bit weird, especially if you use them for cities (they work better for rivers or areas in my experience), but that might depend on your personal taste.
Another thing that seems a bit weird to me is the blue stroke along the coast. It works well for the sea, but it looks strange to have it blend into the land as well (though again, that could just be a matter of personal taste).
One last thing - your lakes seem to be missing a river connecting them to the sea. While that is possible (the Dead Sea, for example), it is rare and usually leads to a lake with a very high salt concentration.

I really like the forests and mountains you used, and I love the font (would you mind telling me what that one is called?)

[Chick]

Nice first map! I'll look forward to seeing more. Kimni hit the main problems, but I can make a suggestion about the coastline ... have the blue on the sea side of the line, since it matches the blue of the sea, and make the land side of the line similarly shaded in a tan color to match the land. What software are you using?

[daxdeathstrike]

Thank you for the advice, kimni and chick. I made this map with GIMP. The strange blue line is....well, a strange blue line. That will be rectified in the next version. Kimni, the font is called Calligraserif and you can find it at http://www.1001freefonts.com/calligraserif.font. I did get a little carried away with the curved labels. Also, I know nothing about rivers. The rivers were definitely a problem for me, as was scale. I'm going to cruise the forums and see if I can find a tutorial on map scale. Thank you for taking the time to look at my map! Cheers!

[kimni]

Thanks for the link to the font.
There's a great tutorial on rivers here: http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=3822
(At least it helped me a lot)

[Barliman]

That's very nice for a first map! Speaking as someone who's just finished his own first map, I can sympathize over how simple some things seems when you first look at them (you rivers, me mountains), and then turn out to be much tougher when you try them. :/

I'm looking forward to seeing further developments!