Commission piece - The Shadowglade RPG Setting for Pathfinder

[Steel General]

Great stuff here Torstan, the mountains are especially good.

My only little nit-pick is the escarpment looks 'off' to me, don't know why and have no ideas on how it might be changed.

[torstan]

Okay, you're the second person to point to that escarpment. Can you take another look and give me some ideas as to what feels off?

[Steel General]

I think that it lacks a sense of 'height' - it looks more like a gash or heavy crease in the map.

Maybe add a bit of 'hills' leading up to it or something.

[torstan]

Okay, I'll have a fiddle with that and see what I can come up with.

[Carnifex]

The mountains looks great. Must have took a while to make. The woods looks good as well - I might borrow the style

The only possible improvement would be the rivers which sometimes seems flow uphill.

The escarpment could be made so that the cliffs were visible. Also try to make the "lower" ground a little bit brighter close to the cliffs. See my quick modifications below.

[torstan]

Okay, any chance you can circle areas where you think the rivers flow uphill? I'll tweak any areas that you find. I'm not sure that lightening the base of the escarpment will work - it's not really what it would look like. My plan had been to show a bit of the cliff. I'll put a new version up with that later on.

[Carnifex]

I must first say again that I love the look of those mountains. Are they "hand drawn"?.

I just meant that when you make the "lower" ground darken it might look like the ground are lower than the ground to the west.

Rivers can be somewhat of a personal opinion but I've attached my suggestions.

(The question mark: Only a minor remark/question: it seems unlikely that the river would flow into the hills from the plains (but it would of course work if the plains are higher ground than the hills).)

[Karro]

This is fantastic. Both the mountains and the forests, especially, are beautiful.

[torstan]

@Carnifex. I see your point. Thanks for the fresh eyes. I'll fix the hills around there to make it clear where the water would flow. I see what you mean about the gradual darkening towards the east looking like the ground drops off towards the escarpment. That would of course screw up the water flow. I'm not totally sure how to go about fixing that, but I have some ideas.

With the mountains - yes they are totally hand drawn with a standard hard round brush. They're made up of one overlay layer and two soft light layers where the light and shade and colours are built up over a parchmenty textured background.

[TheMarcus7]

That kind of effect is hard to portray on this kind of map. I'll be interested in your solution since it may have an application in the project I'm working on