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Good map, I like the shape of the land. The cloud effect is a bit strong over the sea, and I would probably go for a paler blue in order to make the land "pop" more.
The Continent of Vindarten
For some reason, I've always be fascinated by Runequest's Questworld map. In particular, their focal continent of Kanos holds a particularly strong appeal to me. When Questworld was published in 1982, I grabbed a copy, "filed the serial numbers off" (so-to-speak) and started using Kanos as my own D&D campaign continent (renamed to "Vindarten".) I've used it, in parts, ever since.
However, the original maps provided with the official product were little more than black line drawings on a white background and I've always wished that they could have been much, much more. Since I've doing a lot of other mapping for my D&D campaign world (in Photoshop CS4), I decided to take a stab at fleshing out Kanos/Vindarten. Here's my finished result.
Vindarten.jpg
My thanks goes out to Tear for his "Saderan" tutorial. It was instrumental in the creation of my oceans for this map!
Last edited by buzzgunner; 06-08-2016 at 05:00 PM.
Good map, I like the shape of the land. The cloud effect is a bit strong over the sea, and I would probably go for a paler blue in order to make the land "pop" more.
Nice start for a landscape, but there's no labelling or context... is this really finished?
The line-gradient outlining the landmass gives the continent the appearance of floating in the air above the water rather than nesting in the water.
I like the coastline, you avoid the squareness which is hard to do. However, the gray brown desert looking biomes... Rivers irrigating them and no vegetation? Might you explain it cause it could be interesting but also it could be unnatural.
Will be terse as I only have my left hand. Sorry, don't mean to be rude.
The colours all highly saturated and all middle intensity. All they have to distinguish them is hue. You also have a lot of noise. That makes for rather poor readability. The rivers are particularly bad. Contrast is important. Try to keep as much available to use as possible by keeping large areas either fairly light or fairly dark so that you can contrast significant features with it. Have a clear idea of what's important to your map. What is it for? What information is absolutely required to make that work? What information would be useful to help provide context? Make sure the vital information is absolutely clear. Add the supplementary info only if it doesn't detract from the important information. Restrict the level of detail of the supplementary information if possible.
Contrasting visual densities are also important. Try to avoid filling up space with meaningless noise filters. A natural variation of information density draws the eye to what's important. Blank space is a good thing so use it for what it is rather than trying to fill it up.
You also have seriously mismatched information about the projection. The equally spaced straight parallels say this is normal equidistant cylindrical, which would be a horrible projection for something in this range of latitudes; even if you picked a standard parallel to minimize distortion there would be massive distortion somewhere. Over this extent it also wouldn't be either distance or bearing preserving which means the scale bar and compass rose can't possibly be correct. There's no way to even come close to preserving both scale and compass bearings at this extent. Again, the purpose of the map is critical to getting this right. Is it for navigation? Physical reference?, Political reference? A base map for thematic information?
The rivers in the SE are completely unnatural. Something vaugely like that but much smaller might make sense as the delta for a large river system but it makes no sense at the massive size it is and all by itself without a much larger upstream area feeding it.
Be very, very circumspect about noise filters and "glow" effects. They have places for both generating fictional terrain and simulating low tech map making techniques but if you just toss them arround willy nilly all you will get is obvious looking noise and blur filters.
buzzgunner did you first post this as WIP? As a general rule it's best to post things first in the WIP area, so people can comment and give tips. Just personally I've many times posted things I considered finished, but I was able to improve them following members comments and advice.
I didn't post it as a WIP as I thought that it was finished. Clearly, based on the responses, that's not the case. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the feedback and plan to act on all the good suggestions. Is it possible to move this thread to "Region/World Mapping" section as a WIP? (I assume a moderator or admin will need to do this.)Originally Posted by Robulous
I would, however, like to comment on the observation that Elterio Delgard made regarding the rivers.
Realistically, at the scale of my map, rivers shouldn't even be visible. For example, here's a shot of the Grand Canyon (clipped from Google Earth), at an altitude much much lower than that of my map:
Grand_Canyon.jpg
As you can see, while Lake Powell and Lake Mead are visible, as is the canyon itself, the Colorado River is too small to be seen.
Regarding the missing vegetation along the sections of river passing through desert regions, this would be a problem if those regions were being irrigated and crops were being grown. However, if no human activity is present, there's no reason why substantial plant life should be visible at the given altitude. Here, for example, is an image (again from Google Earth) of the present-day Upper Nile:
Upper_Nile_River.jpg
This is at roughly the same altitude as the Grand Canyon image (above). Note that while broad areas of vegetation are visible in some locations, much of the land immediately adjacent the river is barren. Given that areas of my map that show rivers through desert regions are unpopulated, I designed them to appear the same.
Moved the thread for you.
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