October Entry - Trade map of the Ynchong Empire

[Sapiento]

Here my WIP for the October challenge.
The idea is to make a map for traders who come to the Ynchong Empire (a quasi-Chinese analog) which shows the allowed trade routes, the licensed trade cities and the most interesting goods.

I still have to do the rivers, towns, goods, the border for the map, compass and some deco elements. I'm not sure if I can finish it in time.

[Ramah]

Very nice looking start. I hope you manage to finish it in time.

[Sapiento]

Added rivers and some more detail on the map.

[rdanhenry]

Expect the river police at any minute. I'm spotting multiple violations. Lakes with multiple outflows, river splitting (and in the lower right you have a split that can't pass as an oversized delta no matter how you squint at it), and what may generously be taken to be exaggerated river deltas.

The colors go together nicely. The shape of the continent is nice. But you probably want to fix the rivers before you go any further.

[Gandwarf]

I like what I am seeing... you really got a nice style, Sapiento.
rdanhenry is right though, your rivers are a bit of a mess. Mostly the lakes with multiple outflows and splitting rivers (that can't be mistaken for river deltas).
It's your map of course, so maybe there's a reason for this... if you are going for realism it doesn't seem right.

[Sapiento]

Expect the river police at any minute. I'm spotting multiple violations. Lakes with multiple outflows, river splitting (and in the lower right you have a split that can't pass as an oversized delta no matter how you squint at it), and what may generously be taken to be exaggerated river deltas.

The colors go together nicely. The shape of the continent is nice. But you probably want to fix the rivers before you go any further.

I like what I am seeing... you really got a nice style, Sapiento.
rdanhenry is right though, your rivers are a bit of a mess. Mostly the lakes with multiple outflows and splitting rivers (that can't be mistaken for river deltas).
It's your map of course, so maybe there's a reason for this... if you are going for realism it doesn't seem right.

Thank you both for the hints for the rivers. I'll change them.

[mearrin69]

I really like the colors and style. You've already got a sort of Asian feel to it somehow. Looking forward to seeing how it turns out.
M

[Sapiento]

Thanks.


Here the new WIP. I corrected some of the river violations and put in the towns and cities.
However, I'm not quite sure about the city style. Maybe I go for somewhat simpler white outline pictures.

[mearrin69]

I like the city style but would like to see more variation, unless you're going for an iconic thing (by this I mean pic x=metropolis, y=city, z=town). Time is short for these entries I guess but it'd be cool if you could sort of come up with a little flavor for each city and make the icon slightly different. Just a thought...and probably a time-consuming one at that!

Maybe a little more shading on the forest canopies? At first I mistook them for grassy mesas. The green looks to me more like a flat layer of vegetation than treetops. Now that I look at it again, maybe the suggestion of treetops (with squiggly lines or whatever) might be more useful there than just shading. I think the strokes just inside the border partially led me to misread them as landforms rather than trees.

Looking great!
M

[Sapiento]

Indeed, the cities are meant to be icons, exactly as you described them.
And I will think about the point with the forests.