The Empire - working title

[rana]

Hello there,

I'm having trouble starting my card. This is my second attempt, at least I am reasonably satisfied with the coastline.
The picture doesn't show the real "dimensons", because I painted the coastline on 22 DIN A4 sheets and glued them together. Some lines are a bit distorted by the assembly of different photos in Photoshop.
Hopefully this is enough for generel criticism.

Now I have this basis and wonder where mountains and rivers should be placed. I've read and seen many tutorials and basically know how it works, but as soon as I try to implement all the information somehow, something gets stuck. Is there a "Right" or "Wrong" where mountains are placed?

I am very grateful for any tips, criticism or other suggestions!

workingtitle.jpg

[XCali]

Hey hey, hope you are doing well.

The coastline is coming along nicely. It looks like it is a good amount of random. I do wonder about the dark black blots that exist at the moment? I'd reduce those if you can.

The mountains is a far more complicated thing to talk about. The short answer, it depends on what you want the map to do. Like, is it very mountainous with many ranges, or are there fewer ranges but larger plains.
To start I would suggest you think about how REAL you want to go. If you want it to be highly fantasy, you can go ahead and place them how you would feel the story would need them to be. Because even if it is fantasy, just take how incredibly varied mountains ranges from one continent to another on Earth can be. So, you can really experiment here.
Then you can go the more realistic route of figuring out mountain ranges by how plate tectonics work on your world. Though, I can't be help there. I am more fantasy oriented with my maps, but there are quite a few of the others on here that enjoy that side of mapping.

I would say this, know that straight lines in nature is not that common. And single alone mountains are also less common. From that you can go. Start with a few and chip away at it.
On rivers, remember, it is very rare for a river to split downstream. The majority of times rivers join and they always flow to the lowest point, be it an ocean or a lake nestled away in a basin. (Or you can go the magic route , but then it needs to be explained.) A nice thing is to look at satellite photos of rivers, it gives a very nice idea.

And remember to have fun. Cartography is a journey. It might be slow sometimes, but there is always a path forward.
Cheers
-Omri

[rana]

thank you for your answer, xcali!

these black dots will disappear in any case. I'll scan the sheets and put them together, then it looks better

The mountains are something that slows me down a bit, but I will try my hand at it, many thanks for the tips.
Are the mountains something that should be on the map first? My first map failed because of that.


This is the original and I don't have a computer mouse at the moment:
IMG_3563_orig.jpg

[rana]

I'm doing some sketches at the moment and search for an easy way to fill the map because it's a bit toooooo huge

IMG_5179.JPG

[rana]

worked on the map a bit after some sketches:
IMG_5250.jpg

I'm not sure if this okay so far, read many tutorials for map making, have seen very much videos and this is the result of it.