WIP - Tirwen

[waverlyt]

Thanks to the suggestions, here's the current version:
tirwen09oct2008.png

Changes:

• Rivers outlined, desaturated, and blurred slightly.
• Lake outline partially erased and blurred, lake colors desaturated and made slightly more transparent.
• Desert coloring made less transparent.
• Continent outline changed to a dark brown.
• Size of town markers reduced to be closer to village/site markers.
• Removed the different label colors; everything uses the same glow now (except for the rivers).
• Svesssiir moved slightly NE.
• The Smoking Peak now has a reason to smoke.
• Shading added to the inner rim of the crater.

Things to do:

• Fixes
• Remove the lake borders where the rivers enter and leave.
• Fix the easternmost peak of the Viridian Mountains where it looks like the continent border is showing through the mountain itself.
• Come up with a noun I like for the "sites" and add their symbol to the legend.
• Make the distance scale slightly more transparent so that it blends better with the other legend text.
• Make the southwestern border of the Pag Mell swamp share the same border as the Pag Ora river.
• After making the desert coloring less transparent, I'm not happy with how the "dune lines" look.
• Dalmere forest should have a part in the trees where the Moritu river exits it, instead of having a tree growing out of the water.
• Maybe redo the mountains. I've seen several examples of truly excellent mountains, and Elderbean's mountain redo has inspired me.

• Additions
• The area between Dalmere forest and the Dunefields, west of the Ironpith, is dotted with large, sakura-like trees -- roughly one tree per square mile. I'm not sure how to show this and still have it look nice; my previous attempts have been unsatisfactory.
• A bamboo-like plant grows all over the place in Pag Mell, but I've run into the same problem as above -- I'm not sure how to make stands of bamboo look nice on the map.
• A few more coastal labels need to be added.

[torstan]

Looks great. think the labels are very clear as to what they label.

I'd erase the lake boundary where the rivers enter and leave - it still looks like there are damns across the river entrances. Otherwise I'd leave it as is - it looks good to me. Nonetheless, your improvements sound interesting. I look forward to seeing the way this develops.

[waverlyt]

Looks great. think the labels are very clear as to what they label.

I'd erase the lake boundary where the rivers enter and leave - it still looks like there are damns across the river entrances. Otherwise I'd leave it as is - it looks good to me. Nonetheless, your improvements sound interesting. I look forward to seeing the way this develops.

I knew there was something else; thanks much -- I've added it to the list. Hopefully I'll be able to work on this a bit tonight.

[Gandwarf]

I have been lurking in this thread from the beginning. I just have to say you have a really unique style and I repped you for it. Somehow your map looks to me a bit like a medieval tapestry. No critique for now, you have done some good improvements.

[The Stoat]

I really like your style. It reminds me of the style Le Guin use in Earthsea books for pictures and maps. A thought on the sites, it would depend on if you could group them some way you could use that to name them. For example if they are all hazards you could name them dangers and mark them with a tiny skull. If they are all just significant location you could just label them as Noteworthy and keep the x. This sound like some pompous fictional academic to me but it fits how artistic the map is.
Over all I think the map is quite beautiful.

[waverlyt]

tirwen15oct2008.png
Changes:

• Added an island and village off in the NW
• Fixed lake/river borders
• Fixed Viridian Mountains
• Made distance scale slightly more transparent so that it looked similar to the nearby text
• Pag Mell shares its northern and southwestern borders with the rivers in those areas
• Blurred 'dune lines' in deserts
• Fixed the tree growing out of the Moritu River on the Dalmere forest border
• Added the trees I mentioned above around Lake Tondo...not sure about these yet...
• Added the last couple coast labels

I went through two revisions of the mountains and ended up scrapping it all and going back to the originals. I'm sure it's just because I'm used to looking at them, but I've come to like how the mountains that are there now look.

Pag Mell didn't get its bamboo for similar reasons; I just couldn't come up with something that I liked. I think, though, that it's something that can be left up to description during a game.

I have been lurking in this thread from the beginning. I just have to say you have a really unique style and I repped you for it. Somehow your map looks to me a bit like a medieval tapestry. No critique for now, you have done some good improvements.

Thanks for the compliments! It's funny that you mention tapestries; when I first started, I was using a canvas texture instead of an old paper texture because I wanted it to look like a cloth map.

I really like your style. It reminds me of the style Le Guin use in Earthsea books for pictures and maps. A thought on the sites, it would depend on if you could group them some way you could use that to name them. For example if they are all hazards you could name them dangers and mark them with a tiny skull. If they are all just significant location you could just label them as Noteworthy and keep the x. This sound like some pompous fictional academic to me but it fits how artistic the map is.
Over all I think the map is quite beautiful.

Thank you much! I'm still not sure what to do about the 'other sites.' I didn't want to add more lines to the legend at first because I had it looking very balanced; the city legend and scale took up similar amounts of visual space. I'm worried that the three lines on the legend side I have now unbalance it already, and I don't know what else I'd add to balance things on the scale side if I started adding more symbols/lines.

[The Stoat]

For the legend you could move the scale below the legend items, and make two columns of the legend items. Divide the the other sites into two types, maybe danger and wonders, or any other good and bad designation. Keep the x for the bad places and use another simple icon for the good ones, maybe a little spiral.
One thing I think of is none of the artistic maps are the type of map I would create of my personal surroundings. If the map is to represent a map drawn by someone of the world let the fictional person decide. Let the map tell you how the fictional person drawing the map sees his world.

[StillCypher]

I really like your style with this map, too, and you've done such a good job incorporating all the great advice you've been given. The colors are very energetic and inviting, and the style itself very artistic.

I have two tiny nits to pick.

First, the red edge around the Crater of the Eclipse seems too uniform. (Love the idea and the colors and the textures, though!)

Second would be the mountains. I like the style/coloring just fine -- it matches the style of the rest of the map -- but the size seems off to me. They're too close to the same size as the trees, and mountains ought to maybe give the impression of being bigger!

All in all, though, I am quite captivated!

[torstan]

This looks great. Good work.

[loogie]

just reading your process, it sounds like you probably did a bunch of things you didn't have to, tho the result looks quite good. I don't know what autoRealm exports as, but if its vector, and you have illustrator, you could use illustrators smoothing to create the simplify much like your printing and digitizing (even more if you had a plugin called MaPublisher for illustrator)... probably save you quite a bit of time.. i know digitizing is quite tedious... other then that, i'd only suggest tapering your inner rivers (the ones that end on their own, not going to a river etc)... there are tutorials on this is photoshop all over, i believe zombie nirvana was where I saw it.. sorry i don't have a link... other then that, looking good