New Map Using Inkscape

[RobA]

I spent 1/2 knocking together a quick map in Inkscape. I have laid out the main land mass and surrounding islands as well as adding basic shading to get a feel for the land.

My question is regarding the roughness of the coastline. I drew these freehand then applied a "fractalize" effect on them but they might be too rough, so I simplified the contour. Which do you think is better?

I also attached a closeup with the more fractalized coast to show the detail.
map1.png
By the way, this is completely in Inkscape, with no post processing.

-Rob A>

[Robbie]

I think the first image has a good amount of fractalization...I wouldn't say too much at all. I like what you've done with the ripples on the shorelines...is that automatic in inkscape?

[RobA]

The ripples are "built in" but they were easy.

I just duplicated the continent shape, simplified it with ctrl-L, did an offset to push it out, then set the fill to none and changed the line stroke. I repeated that (without the simplify) four times, choosing a longer dashed stroke each time. It was quite easy.

Alternately, I could have made them a linked offset, which would mean that if I changed the continent shape it would have followed, but I haven't figured that out in Inkscape yet...

-Rob A>