Tylon fantasy world map

[gnoam]

I ran across the cartographers guild site only recently, while working on updating these maps, and decided I would post here since it helped me out.
I wanted to make a nicer looking world map, so I scanned in my old pencil drawings and drew this (I used photoshop cs4 and an intuos 4 drawing tablet). I'm fairly happy with the current state, though there's plenty of things that could be better about it. This is an ongoing rpg campaign world and many things were decided about it by me and my friends a long time ago when we were kids. I'm on the fence as to how much I should change to look better, be more geographically correct, or fix silly names, and how much to stick to cannon as it were. There's a lot of personal history in it so I don't want to change things too much, but I do want to make it look good. Anyway, hoping to get some thoughts on that, and any other general comments and critique would be welcome.
Tylon_worldmap_v7.jpg
Thanks, --gNoam

[rdanhenry]

What a lot of lovely sea creatures there are! Your colors will be too bright for some tastes, but I like them. You might add a few creatures to the land; it looks rather depopulated by comparison. Speaking of population, perhaps major cities should be the priority?

It's a good thing that mermaid lives in the sea. If she had to stay on land, I'm sure she'd have back trouble.

[JonathanCR]

This is quite fun. Though I have to admit I'm mostly wondering what on earth an island called "Cluaca" could be like. I'm not sure I'd want to know...

[gnoam]

Wait, does it mean something terrible? I always wonder that when I make up names for fake places, if the name I came up with means something in some other language or has some association to it that I'm unaware of. These days I like to do a quick search online just to make sure there's nothing inappropriate associated with a name before I use it. Most of the names on this map, however, were made up a long time ago and I certainly didn't do any research then. I was maybe 13 at the time. I'm sure I didn't realize, for example, that Tuscany is a real world place. Still not sure if I should change that name (the region is mostly African influenced, has nothing to do with Italy)

I might put some critters on land, it's just more cluttered so harder to fit them there. I left the cities off this map for the same reason. If I have the time I'd like to make two versions. One 11x17 size and one huge poster size with a lot more details on it that wouldn't fit on the smaller version. Tylon has always been a cartoonish sort of setting in my mind. I do a lot of drawings for it, like these goblins, so I was trying to match the colorful comic style of the rest of my artwork.
goblins_s.jpg

[tabletopbitsandbobs]

I tend to draw with a parchment texture, more like Lord Of the Rings style. I liked how you use your colors to determine the general biomes of your world. It makes it so anyone can read it where I have trouble sometimes with the icons I use for each kind of biome. Good work! And your sea animals are adorable.

[JonathanCR]

Wait, does it mean something terrible?

Well, it sounds an awful lot like "cloaca", which is Latin for "sewer" and also is a combined anal/sexual opening in birds, reptiles, and monotremes.