The Nesarian Empire

[Caenwyr]

You know what? You're right - I messed up. Stylewise I think I'm on the right track, but location and abundance of the mountains is way overboard. I think I'm gonna get rid of everything I did since my previous update, and start fresh. With some more plausible mountains, hopefully!

[Caenwyr]

Okay. So I went back to the basics, and redrew everything from the mountains up. Here's the new (and in my eyes improved) mountain distribution. I think I found a fun way of visualizing the effect of the terrain on the coastline. Try imagining a world full of water. the bottom is made of a (permeable) canvas cloth, which is pushed above water by mountains. The trick - I think - is to draw the mountains in such a way that the canvas would indeed rise up from the waters and create the coastlines as they are on the map. I believe this attempt better succeeds at this than the previous one.

Still fidgeting with the rivers, so that will be for later. What do you guys think?

Nesarian Empire5.jpg

Coming up next: more mountains (southern continent), and rivers and shading!

[tilt]

much better - the fewer mountains work very well. Looking forward to seeing more

[SrgDark]

Looks pretty great. I like the way you did the coasts

[Eilathen]

I like it better now...although you almost went into the other extreme...it's kind of "empty" now
Also, I do think that the flow of the mountain ranges (not the positioning but the combination of different mountains to form a range) was more natural in the old version, to be honest.

[Caenwyr]

I like it better now...although you almost went into the other extreme...it's kind of "empty" now
Also, I do think that the flow of the mountain ranges (not the positioning but the combination of different mountains to form a range) was more natural in the old version, to be honest.

I'm working on that flow thingy, no worries. It should be better in the newer mountains, plus, I'm doing some ad hoc changes to the old ones as well (over the course of this mountain drawing exercise, so I'll do some more changes in the future as well).

About the empty feeling: you're right, but that's because tons of stuff is still missing! I'm gonna add forests, hills, deserts, cities, roads, borders, labels.... With all of these in place, I'm confident the map will fill in nicely.

Update: some more mountains, some rivers, and a quick terrain shading.

Nesarian Empire7.jpg

[Lingon]

You're harsh on yourself, but you were not wrong to restart, this version is better

[Slylok]

Beautiful. I love this style. Another option for making the mountains less prominent without redoing them all would be to lower their opacity or change their color so that they don't contrast as much. Keep it up. Can't wait to see more.

[Ilanthar]

Yes, I prefer this new vesion too. Nice mountains anyway.