Trying to make this map look as 3D as possible D:

[seredemia]

Ooooh, you added pictures! That's easier for me to understand now I'll go ahead and fix these things now! Thankfully, I haven't merged any layers at all (I have like over 100 layers at the moment....) so these shouldn't be too hard for me to fix.

And yes, haha, I nearly forgot about that serpent... You just reminded me that I need to colour him

THANK YOU ONCE AGAIN.

[Diamond]

I actually liked how you had the title originally; now it's hard to read 'the empire of'. To me anyway. That could be because I'm old and blind though.

Also, by taking away those nifty bevels/cliffs around some of your coasts, I feel like you're going in the exact opposite direction of your thread title. Ultimately though, you have to go with what YOU like, and really, you're a fantastic artist, so I think whatever you come up with will look great.

[seredemia]

I actually liked how you had the title originally; now it's hard to read 'the empire of'. To me anyway. That could be because I'm old and blind though.

Also, by taking away those nifty bevels/cliffs around some of your coasts, I feel like you're going in the exact opposite direction of your thread title. Ultimately though, you have to go with what YOU like, and really, you're a fantastic artist, so I think whatever you come up with will look great.

I'll probably put the title back to how it was since it's hard for me to read it as well... >____<

And I'll see if I can make it looks 3D by painting the land. If not, I might bring the bevel back And thank you!!!

[SJS]

Thanks to Jalhya for pointing out that sea serpent.

[Gamerprinter]

Personally, I was fine with your original beveled title. I understand and can appreciate Max's point of view regarding sticking with one media choice and trying to stay consistent with that purist view, but I'm an artist and I use what media mixes, and techniques that work best for me. You'll find many of my mostly hand-drawn maps with extensive use of bevels. The reason I use bevels, is that I hate to paint, which is part of the reason I don't use Photoshop or GIMP to create my maps. Image editing is most like painting among graphic software. As a traditional artist I prefer to work with pen or pencil (which is why I use vector as my preferred graphics software). Since I also want color, embellishments that denote depth and shading, my personal style is a hybrid of hand-drawn and digital mixed media (which often includes bevels), I let the software do that for me - instead of actually digitally painting by hand.

Some of the 'purists' here have made similar comments regarding my maps. As stated while I can appreciate their point of view, doing it my way is my chosen style, the fact that it jars some people's purist perspectives, in all honesty, I don't really care. Obviously its not an issue with publishers, as I have no shortage of publishers asking me for commissions.

[seredemia]

Just had a look at your maps and I must say that you use bevel really well. They're a nice change to what I've seen here so far! For me, I think what makes a map a map is not the aesthetics, but the layout and info? If that makes sense? As long as it does the job of showing what the world/place is like, then I reckon that's all that matters, regardless of what media is used.

Although I have to admit I myself have probably focused more on aesthetics on this map so far... Oops.

[seredemia]

Okay, so I did more work on the map and this is what I have so far.

My main concerns now are the rivers. (Please tell me I placed them correctly this time...) And no matter how much I try, I can't seem to find a way to make them look *right* on the map. They seem to stick out faaaar too much for my liking. Hmm...

Also, the font for the countries and capital cities are annoying me a lot, but I have no ideas as to how to make them look nice as well as legible on the map... I considered doing the same font as the title for the countries, but it looked a bit too overkill for me... Anybody have any ideas?

I started doing the trees on the west side of the map as well. I don't know if they look okay or not... The trees were far too small for me to do any proper shading on, so I just added a 1px bevel to the brushes. Does it look odd?

Lastly, I changed the map icons. Had to bevel it again because it's really hard to see otherwise. I guess it's because of all the dark colours on the land that makes it hard to see anything else... (Oops.)

[Gamerprinter]

Question: where the Isle of Ambrosia lay, the hills/islands just to the west of that, are those islands - meaning sea exists west of those and into the lake where Ambrosia sits? If those are islands, there should be no rivers flowing from the sea to the sea.

On the south central island you have a river that crosses the south end from sea to sea, this is not possible. To the west of that you have a lake with 3 outlets to the sea. A lake can have multiple in-flowing rivers into it, but only 1 river outlet to the sea. There seems to be several instances of that on this map.

Rivers in your map would most likely begin at the feet of any of your mountain ranges, on the leeward side of the prevailing winds (it tends to be dry on the opposite side). Rivers then flow down the easiest path flowing downhill most always eventually reaching the sea. Rivers can merge with rivers, except to divert around terrain forming islands, rivers generally don't part or fork away to form 2 or more rivers. A river delta is the exception, but in this case the approaching land to the sea is so flat that the river slows down and the sediments it carries begins to settle on the riverbed sometimes forcing the river to divert into a separate channel, but this is only near the mouth of larger river systems.

Think of a river as a tree. At its base is the rivers mouth with the ground as the sea. The trunk is a major river, branches are smaller rivers joining the larger river. Smaller branches are creeks joining larger rivers - tree limbs. That is the general structure of any river system. There are exceptions, but these are rare and specific.

[Scoopz]

The river police...
image.jpg
... Strike again.

Aside from the whole river stuff, which I agree with wholeheartedly, I just wanted to say this is a hella beautiful map, it's got so much vibrant color, it really makes want to study it and learn about those lands.

[Gamerprinter]

Oh, it totally is a beautiful map. I'd rather be honest and helpful. Seredemia specifically asked if her rivers are rights, so I graciously answered.

I can give more specific suggestions, once I understand what certain terrain features actually are and be clear in possible solutions.