Imperium Saerdastim

[Gregorus Prime]

I decided to make the forested river areas slightly transparent and darker. I think it achieves the desired effect. I'm eager to finish this thing so I can start laying down labels and such, then move into the individual regions of the map from there. Tell me what you think.

[Gregorus Prime]

Oh man, it's been quite a while. I've been slacking off a bit on my cartography and I just wanted to see if anyone was still interested in my stupid map.

Anyway, as you can see the topography itself is pretty much finalized and I've moved on to labels. The pillars are human cities, the pentagrams tiefling, masks goliaths/shifters, towers eladrin, spiders drow, and vaguely Communist tools overlaid atop one another are the dwarves. I'm not sure I'm completely satisfied with the roads and borders but they'll do, I suppose. Any criticism is welcome.

[Ascension]

The only thing that I notice is that the lines are dominating. For purely mappy reasons that is a good thing as the information is more important but for artsy reasons I'd make the lines thinner and/or maybe a little more transparent to let the terrain come back. The symbols look really nice but the glows are a bit dominating as well, maybe reduce the size of the glow or the opacity there as well. But overall you've got your head wrapped around this right, it just needs some subtlety. Nice work and nowhere near "stupid".

[Diamond]

Personally, I think that's pretty damn nice looking! The terrain layout is natural and makes sense, I love that sea patterning, and the idea of using different symbols for different races' cities is cool.

One question: what are the two-headed eagles, little temples, and the ships representing?

[Gregorus Prime]

The Aquilas are Imperial capitols, the pillars are Imperial cities, and the boats are (what else) ports.

[landorl]

I strongly agree with Ascension! The map looks great, but the lines are so strong that they obscure the background too much.

[Saule]

I love how you did your forest, it looks great.
I agree about the lines, I also noticed some of the 'glows' around your symbols have colours which don't really 'fit in' entirely with the rest of the map. Especially the green around the towers and the pink for the spiders seem a little too saturated and 'unnatural' in comparison with the landscape colours surrounding them. (just a personal opinion btw, if you don't agree, feel free to ignore me ).

[Gregorus Prime]

Thanks for the advice, everyone. I've re-done the roads in a thinner line that is still plainly visible but not quite so overpowering. I actually like the symbols as they are now. I made half of them from scratch in GIMP and adapted the other half from existing symbols I found, and I assure you the bright glows are intentionally high-contrast so that they stand out more. I'm reluctant to re-do them completely since it's a lot of tedious work to copy them over, scale them, clone them, place them, and glow them all over again, but I think reducing opacity on those glows (with selective erasure) might be a good idea.

I'm dealing with labeling right now. The mountain ranges still need names, as do the rivers, comically oversized lakes, and the major this-is-a-big-deal roads. Recent dental work is causing me discomfort so my progress is a little slowed at the moment, and I have only the faintest inkling of what I want my group's first adventure to be anyway, so maybe taking a break on it to hammer out some more abstract ideas is a good course of action at this point.

[Gregorus Prime]

Hello, everyone. I have made some adjustments to the map itself in light of criticism elsewhere on how I have my biomes laid out. I've made the central province drier and redone the forests and rivers to make a little bit more sense. It's even given me some insight on what happens in that central province as well. (Rich flood plains make for ideal conditions for raising cash crops, etc.)

Labeling of cities and mountains is done. Next comes the little things: rivers, roads, forests, etc.

[Ascension]

I still think that your graphics (thick roads, wide glows, and large text) are overwhelming the map underneath but, shrug, if that's how ya want it then so be it.