How many mountains is too many? ^^;

[Nettle]

Hi hi everyone

I'm Nettle and I'm a DnD player who's gotten a little carried away with building her own world/campaign and now map! I've come at this project with a lot of enthusiasm and basically no idea what I'm doing ^^; I've been going over resources here but I'm on a bit of a mental overload and would greatly appreciate some feedback! As I'm sure you can tell this is half done in quite a few ways as I keep going back and redoing bits. I specifically wanted to add a volcano to the landmass bottom left and bottom centre was originally going to be fens, but that was me at first going "wouldn't it be cool if..." which I know isn't the best method for building a map. Also the massive lake top left? I realised I hadn't drawn a river draining it! o.o so I put one in but I'm not sure it's right :/ Please, all the constructive criticism for how landmasses work!

Hand drawn in Adobe Illustrator. Apologies for the bad image quality, I haven't yet worked out how to make it good image quality and within the allowed file size

MapA0.jpg

[Falconius]

Looks great so far. The amount of mountains depends solely on the amount of mountains there are to be represented, yours look really good and fit nicely (the other limiting factor is artist patience of course, same goes with trees and forests). I didn't see any river issues, you should note that not all lakes drain to the ocean, particularly in very arid places, it's just a general rule. Alternatively they may feed seasonal rivers or be fed by seasonal rivers and only drain part of the year. I'm not sure what critisism you are expecting because it all looks top notch.

There is a minor note that you'll learn from observation, and that is river typically end their journey to the ocean by dumping out land mass, and more often then not build little peninsulas into the ocean, particularly rivers which form deltas. It all depends on the specific circumstances of course, for instance it there is no sea shelf or the river erodes more than it builds etc.

[Nettle]

Thank you for getting back to me, I've been looking at it so much, I can't tell anymore. It's nice to hear its good :D

The inspiration for this place was Iceland, but much bigger - the top part is almost in the Artic circle so is cold/frozen most of the year whereas the southern landmass is not, but scaling is a whole other issue. I wanted at least one volcano BUT I didn't originally do this with plate tectonics in mind so I've been trying to reverse engineer it. I'm think rifting, particularly with the bottom right plate. Does this work? (I'm not sure why the image is coming out blue, it's not on my computer?!?)

Artboard 1-100.jpg

With the lake, I got rid of that river - it was really ugly anyway ^^; - and i'll keep thinking on it. And I can add some bits to the delta with the bottom center land mass, but i'll look more into rivers. Is there a good thread on here about them?

[Confutus]

Just so you know, there are lakes with no outlet. Technically known as endorheic, they lose water by evaporation and seepage. They are usually briny and salty, and there are many of them, although they are usually small and found in arid areas. Examples include the Great Salt Lake (North America) the Dead Sea (Israel), and the Caspian Sea. (Asia). If you want one of those, you should not include an outlet. A freshwater lake does need one.

[Eowyn Cwper]

Your art looks really neat for someone who doesn't know what she's doing! It's true that your seas have got pretty big but I love the overall look. ^^

[Greason Wolfe]

If you look in the Tutorials/How to sub-forum, there is a sticky thread near the top that is all about rivers. You might find it helpful.

[waldronate]

How big is this map? A map a few thousand miles wide is somewhat different than one a few dozen miles wide...

[Nettle]

Just so you know, there are lakes with no outlet. Technically known as endorheic, they lose water by evaporation and seepage. They are usually briny and salty, and there are many of them, although they are usually small and found in arid areas. Examples include the Great Salt Lake (North America) the Dead Sea (Israel), and the Caspian Sea. (Asia). If you want one of those, you should not include an outlet. A freshwater lake does need one.

That's really heplful, thank you! It is supposed to be a freshwater lake so I'll need to go back to that and make it drain to sea. The northern landmass is also really far north in the world (almost in the Arctic circle) so although it's frozen a lot of the year it does melt in the short summers. But seasons is a whole other thing for me to consider o.o

Your art looks really neat for someone who doesn't know what she's doing! It's true that your seas have got pretty big but I love the overall look. ^^

Thank you and thank you :) this is with a lot of reworking! I started this in November last year and I've moved so much around and redrawn so many things as I've learnt new info and new features in Illustrator. You should have seen the rivers to start with - I didn't know about width profiles so I had lots of lines that were narrower than the last to give the same effect. I only recently discovered outline path as a feature which is what transferred my rivers from a single line to what they are now. And I know there's a lot of sea space but I was planning on giving it a big and rounded border so it should be ok in the end!

How big is this map? A map a few thousand miles wide is somewhat different than one a few dozen miles wide...

That's a very valid question ^^' I don't have a fully functioning scale yet - it's definitely looking at thousand+ miles, most likely a couple of thousand of miles but I built this without thinking too much about scale so I'm going to need to really think on it. North to South was supposed to be edge of Arctic circle (so very cold) to edge of...well I'm not sure. Not as far south as the tropic. But the main landmasses are literally called Winter Edge & Summer Edge. I'll probably shrink that scale though, otherwise all the features get realllllly big o.o

[Nettle]

The lake now drains to the sea :)

Screenshot 2020-05-03 at 18.25.08.png

[Confutus]

As it should. Clearly resupplied with meltwater from those undoubtedly glacier-clad mountains to the north, keeping its water cold and fresh.