Helevos: the Anrel Isles

[Robulous]

Thanks all for your feedback!

I really like this - the style is wonderful, artistic and clear. I was wondering how you managed to get the border lines (inner and outer) to look 'aged'? Are they hand drawn?

I'm not sure what you mean by border lines - you mean the red border between Narette and Tresard? If you mean the box around the outside I added I think a black stroke set to I think 99% dissolve opacity, so it's only very slightly broken up giving what I hoped was slight irregularity from traditional ink printing.

- the font size is too varied, from the tiny latitude/longitude on graticule to the names of the regions goes too much of a difference. At least to my eyes...

- the use of outer grow on the labels is the lazy man's solution, and in your map it shows how poor of a solution it is, because it hides the texture. Instead, why don't you try using layer masks?..

I'll have a look at standardising the font sizes, I agree it's a bit of a mishmash. But yes you spotted the key think, I am lazy I've heard about the layer mask solution but I'll confess I've always shied away from using masks in Photoshop, I don't really know what they're for! Can you advise me or is there a tutorial on using layer masks instead of outer strokes for labelling? I think a lot of people would benefit from that knowledge.

the coasts look too smooth and regular considering it features also a mountanous zone and a lot of hills and fluvial erosion , I woudl break the shapes a little and adding some inlets

The coastline does have inlets and some islands if you look closely, but there's a couple of reasons why it's the way it is. Geographically Helevos suffers a cycle of rising and falling sea levels - it's currently in it's highest sea level era so the coastline is pretty new, only a few thousand years only, insufficient time for significant coastal erosion and not enough time for deltas. The second reason: in my mind it's a map of a real place, it is how it is and I'm not suddenly changing it now

[HadrianVI]

This is a very nice looking map. I especially like the description at the bottom of the map. It looks very much like an actual atlas page.