Alenhold- Commission WIP

[Caenwyr]

Looking very good already, ladiestorm. I absolutely love almost everything in your map - I'm just not very fond of the coastlines and shorelines at the moment. it looks like the land is just cut off there. I assume you just haven't gotten to that part of the map yet though

[Mouse]

Coming on very nicely

With regard to the coastline, maybe the water around the edge of the land would look a little greener/more shallow if you adjusted the glow effect on the land sheet to make it more sand coloured, rather than pale blue/white?

I don't know - just a thought

[mrjane]

Hey, nice to see some progress on the map. It looks fantastic! I also like that there are people on here giving you thoughts on actually cartography! I hope it's helping tune your craft. I can't be as helpful as I know next to nothing about this stuff. As per the lore, it's getting closer and closer to perfect. I love the addition of the farmland, really gives it some character. My writing partner and I will have a closer look on Thursday when we get together. He's usually a bit better at pointing stuff out than I am. Thanks for the update!

[mrjane]

So, we finally got a chance to have a good look at the map. I must say, we thought it was perfect so far! There are lots of little touches that we think really bring things alive, like the white cap on the big mountain to the north and things like that. Really well done. The question now, is how much more detail do you plan/want to do? What other information would like from us? Country names, capital cities, borders, landmarks, etc? Any of that kind of stuff? Some of that info has been in previous documentation I've given you, but our detailing of the map has come a long way since then. Any of this is dependent on what you're willing to do of course, so just let us know.

[ladiestorm]

Hi mrjane! Yes, we are at the point where I start to put in landmarks, settlements/ cities, roads and political borders. So I need you and your partner to think about those things, and decide how much detail you want.

For example.....I'm sure you will want the kingdoms carved out, but I'm not sure that different colored orders are the way you want to go. Perhaps just a dotted line to show the borders would be enough?

Also, you mentioned a shrine or temple in the dessert, do you actually want the shrine (or any other landmarks) visible? Do you want the main roads on this map? Do you want all of the cities/settlements mentioned in your book to be on the map? Or just the Capitols?

I will make this map as detailed as you choose, but keep in mind that this is an overland map... It doesn't have to have every shrine, village and farm in it. If there is a place mentioned in your book that has a strong significance, or a major event occurs there, then it should definitely be on the map. Otherwise, I would say just the major.cities and landmarks, but it's up to you. Just let me know.

[mrjane]

Sorry this reply took me so long. And it's sorta gonna be a bit longer too. My partner and I have had problems getting together the last few weeks, so things have been moving slowly. We did manage to get together last night and we put together a bunch of things to add. I finalized the few things we didn't have time and sent them to him this afternoon. I'm just waiting for him to look it over and then I'll post it here.

[mrjane]

Okay, here's what we came up with. I got kind of fancy with the font and stuff (I like getting carried away by that kind of stuff), but we have most of the major locations named. We have cities, shrines, walls, and a town labelled as well. On the map, they're just white dots, so we were hoping you could come up with something better for that. I don't know if you can do little graphics for the cities and town. The shrines are spire-like, about 3 stories high, round (like a stalagmite, sort of), so if there's something that could work for that as well, that'd be awesome. The shrines are not labelled on purpose. Last is the walls (on the north and east sides of Kayn). These are exactly what they sound like; giant walls that close off the borders of the country.

We talked about doing border lines, but I'm not sure if it would look good, or if it's even necessary. Do you have any thoughts on this?

Last thing, how difficult would it be to open up the Grinning Sea more to make it... well, an actual sea. We were fine with a lake, but then started talked about future scenarios and stuff and though it's not a big deal, we think we'd like it to be a sea.

I think that's everything we wanted to add on our end. I'm open to any other flourishes or whatever you want to add to make it your own too. Thanks for your patience on all of this. Take care!

[mrjane]

Whoops. I realized after I posted that I attached the wrong map. I had made a couple small changes and forgot to overwrite the old one. Here's the most up-to-date version.

Alenhold Map (Tyler's Version).jpg

[Rongar]

This looks pretty good! The river police might have a word on some of those rivers, though. And while the font has got a really nice feel to it that fits the map very well, it looks like it got some aliasing going on. If this was my map, I'd also consider a thin outline for the coast, but that's not a necessity. All in all a great map. That ocean is gorgeous.

[jfrazierjr]

the issue I have is that the textures don't really blend into some of the map symbols. This is one of the issues I had when I first started using applications such as Fractal Mapper and CC and why I switched to GIMP to gain far more control. Unfortunately, I don't use CC, so I can't suggest anything to help(if it exists). Believe Mouse uses it, so she might be able to give some pointers.

the first thing to catch my eye was the desert area where the symbols are much more pastel sand color compared to the more orangish color of the underlying texture. The other textures a a bit distracting due to the thickness of the lines, but color wise match up relatively well. What is that area to the East of Kayn? The texture appears to be gigantic bushes, which is a bit odd if that's not what they are supposed to be due to some in world reason.

Would you ever consider a two application workflow? You could somewhat easily get a base map with just the symbols on it and no textures and then add color/textures within GIMP or another piece of software such as Paint.Net, PS, etc. I know others start in Inkscape/Illustator, or Wilbur/Fractal Terrains, or whatever for their base landforms and then export to us PS or GIMP to get a bit more control, so that approach is not unheard of around these parts.