Sera - World Map

[Alturax]

Another giga-update:

Mountains, rivers and cliffs!

Step 11.jpg

[Alturax]

Update:
Tried an experimental Ocean style and wrapped up the land/terrain etc. Will need to do some work (and could appreciate suggestions) on Forests! I have no idea how to draw them or what style would fit the map. Any tips?

Step 13.jpg

[Ilanthar]

This is excellent! I really like your color palette and style. As for the forests, it depends if you're going for a "carpet forest" or "repeated tree" style. Or a mixed/different one of course.

[Alturax]

Another update:
Fixed up Ocean colour to make it a bit more fitting with the land colours. Added a border for some runic text or something, a compass rose and a few lines. But most importantly, i tried to make good looking forests, which IMO turned out ok, but probably could be a bit better. Thoughts?

Step15.jpg

[ChickPea]

Wow, this has come a long way since I last checked in! I hadn't realised you were going to colour the oceans quite so dramatically (I somehow imagined you were going to tint the parchment a little. No idea why I assumed that, it'll teach me to jump to conclusions! )

I like the way it's looking. The colours are very striking, and I think your forests look OK. It's coming together really well.

[Alturax]

Another update, since I've taken a break for though on Terrain/Ocean/etc. I've started creating the world to fit the map, starting with a few "countries" and whatnot, routes and a bit of lore to help me on later. I'l post it here for you guys and for my brain to keep track of what I'm doing

Step16.jpg and (for readability) 1e5c198a1408c2f68509beaa262f3a72.jpg

Any tips of how this could be made more believable? Is it too far fetched and ridiculous? I put in the basics and placeholder names plus some info that will be useful later for naming the cities/etc.

[Alturax]

Coming in with an update:
Took me a while to get to this point, And I made some decisions regarding the overall tone of the map.
One of my main problems with it was that it was a bit too white, with very little colour. I wanted to maintain the parchment look without overwhelming it too much with heavy colours.
My solution came in the form of a tricky contrast fiddling session in which I fixed a bunch of issues I had with the colour, giving it a more orange-ish tone while maintaining the feel of it.
Can't really do much more with the terrain sadly, as my computer nearly burns up when I try to edit it...
Then I added roads with the Path tool and made the city/important town dots with the pencil tool.

Step 21.jpg

Now I'm gonna give labeling it's time, to see if I can settle on things that I won't regret later.

[Alturax]

Huge update!
Finished city labels, with capitals and smaller towns. Leaving out the really small villages seems like a good idea, since it would all be a cluster of dots and scrambled names.
Now, I'l be finishing up the Ocean stuff (compass, lines, nautical routes, etc) in the next update, and in a few i'l just scale down the map very slightly and finish it!
Then I'l try to get it printed.

Here's the map: (With a huge issue with duplicated names randomly strewn across the sea)

Step 24.jpg


Edit: Fixed it!

Step 24eh5.jpg

[Alturax]

Update - More Labels

Starting to have issues with space (mostly because I wanted to add some terrain labels on the rivers/mountains etc, and I simply cant!
And also added some LotR runes to the sides of the border to make it look a bit nicer:

Step 25.jpg

[Ilanthar]

I found the dropped shadow under the labels not so helpful. It makes them less legible I think.