Creating a map for my novel

[FAHall]

The area is a little over 100 miles across.

I worked it out and I think it is 20pixels/mile.

I'm reworking the lake so it has a couple "inlets" and only 1 "outlet".


I'll post it up sometime today.

[FAHall]

Okay, I took another stab at it.

I have now mapped all of the rivers within the country I'm mapping. The landmasses to the north will get rivers, as will the southern region of my map, but I think I am going to leave those until the end, as they are not vital to the map itself.


If you guys could take another look at it and let me know how it looks as far as river realism goes, that would be great.

I'll be basing my hills, marshes, mountains, etc on where the rivers flow.


Scale: 20px = 1mile

[Steel General]

Looks good to me, might want to look at where the rivers empty into the ocean(s). It looks like you have a little bit of overlap on some of them.

[FAHall]

You mean where the blue river line crosses over my black coastline?

I'm trying to decide stylistically how I'm going to handle the rivers emptying into the oceans. Going to try a few things and see what I like best.

[FAHall]

Okay, maybe I'm an idiot, but I'm having trouble with my mountains.

I'm using the brushes that Vhailor made from Ramah's Aronbor map.

My problem is that since the brushes are transparent for the "light" areas, when I lay my mountains down, the dark areas of the mountain behind are showing through.

The only solution I can think of (to still be able to change the color later) is to go through and erase the dark areas from the back mountains either as I go or once I'm all finished.


Is there a better solution to this problem?


Thanks,
Alex

[Ramah]

You have 3 choices really.

1) Keep the brushes further apart so they don't overlap.

2) Paint any brush that goes over another one on a separate layer so you can erase part of the bottom mountain easily.

3) Check out this tutorial...

http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=7336

... that tells you how to use the Clone Stamp with brushes so that they mask the brush below (check the end of the thread to see an important setting - not sure if it was edited into the original post or not).

[jfrazierjr]

You have 3 choices really.

1) Keep the brushes further apart so they don't overlap.

2) Paint any brush that goes over another one on a separate layer so you can erase part of the bottom mountain easily.

3) Check out this tutorial...

http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=7336

... that tells you how to use the Clone Stamp with brushes so that they mask the brush below (check the end of the thread to see an important setting - not sure if it was edited into the original post or not).

4) paint your own mountains by hand... see my sig...

[FAHall]

I added mountains to the map.


I also reduced the amount of rivers.


Once I get the "Looks good" from you guys, my next step will be to add hills.


If you all could please let me know how this looks (both in terms of realism and in terms of looking "cool"), that would be excellent.


You guys are awesome.


Thanks a bunch,
Alex

[FAHall]

Also, if you all could suggest where hills need to be for realism, that would be great. I've got some ideas, and I'd love to hear what you guys think.


I'm open to any and all feedback on this map.

I'm a first timer, but I want to end up with a kick-ass map.

[ravells]

I think it's begining to look fantastic - the handdrawn mountains are wonderful. Try this (not sure if it will work), but rather than having your mountains pure black, use the colour picker to select the fawn background colour and then make the mountains a very dark version of that (use a brightness slider)...so it's more of a dark grey/fawn/black....might look even better.