Reply With QuoteWelcome aboard, LL. If you need help finding anything, advice on techniques, help with a tutorial, anything etc etc, don't be afraid to ask. We're a friendly bunch.
Introduction
Hello, I'm Lady Lithia
I'm a math teacher in my real life, teaching high school geometry in Southern Oregon. I also love to do digital and real-world art, and I write fiction as a hobby. I'm also a published author in non-fiction (boring math and test taking stuff).
My biggest dream is to be published in fiction. I love to write and learned about National Novel Writing Month last year (NaNoWriMo) and I won with my first attempt. I'm now writing a seven-volume novel that spans 2800 years and is about a fictional island in the region of the Balearic Islands. After two and a half novels I have come to realize that I need a map to keep everything straight. I sketched a map, but would like to learn how to make it into a map - or find someone else willing to take my concept and make it into a map. Since I work full-time and am involved in writing seven novels I don't have much time available for making a map, but I do need a map so that I keep the details of my stories straight. My hope is I can learn something from this website and make a few friends along the way.
Now that I've discovered this site, I'm going to try to look around, post the required five times so that I have a little better access, since I'm not a spammer or a bot.
Welcome aboard, LL. If you need help finding anything, advice on techniques, help with a tutorial, anything etc etc, don't be afraid to ask. We're a friendly bunch.
Thank you so much. I have actually been overwhelmed by how truly friendly everyone is here!
This is the map I'm working on.
Welcome.. If you are time constrained and all that you could grab some of those many brush sets out there for mountains, trees and all that. Can definitely speed up the process
Overall, a nice interesting shape to Estolia. I'll just assume that the labels like "Western" are temporary and everything will eventually be as interestingly named as "Goat Isle" or "Ankhamun". (Although I am curious as to why an island is labelled "Eastern Peninsula" -- suggestion of a past cataclysm?) You might want to tone down those massive deltas a bit. There aren't any outright impossibilities in your rivers (though three major rivers all with huge deltas is quite unlikely), but the river flowing out of the lake hugs the bottom of the cliff at the edge of Plateau. That implies that the land right below that cliff is lower than the land to the east and this is true for the whole length of the river. This is pretty unlikely. If there is a plot purpose to it, of course, accept the unlikelihood, but otherwise, you might want to steer the waters over to the east.
And then I look at the scale and see this is an island, not a continent. So the castle isn't grossly oversized, but the number of mountains is excessive. An island like this probably would have one or two main peaks, not whole mountain ranges, assuming it had mountains at all. Even an island like Oahu, which has a pair of ranges, would be better represented with a ridgeline-based drawing of the ranges rather than distinct mountain symbols. In that case, you see the ranges run parallel, because they were formed together as twin volcanic peaks from a double hotspot moved over time. Again, naturalism may not be a goal here, but your mountains suggest a continental map, not an island, as for that matter does the presence of such different names as "Goat Island", "Ankhamun" and "Pequeño" which suggest room for a multitude of cultures.
Otherwise, there isn't a lot to comment on. It is a good start, with the above points to consider. You have a nice border and the inset for location is nicely done, with the other landforms on it also being interesting and plausible.
rdanhenry - Thanks so much for your response to me. I've included my original sketch here. Perhaps it might help to explain that other than sketches like the one attached, I've never tried to make a map digitally like this one. It's my first attempt and only one day's worth at that. I'm a super-raw novice. I discovered NaNoWriMo last year, and ended up becoming so inspired by it, that I participated and won last year, and that inspiration spread to writing 2 and a half novels about Estolia -- I've got a seven-volume series outlined, and 350K words. Estolia is a fictional island, but the other islands on my inset map are actual real islands... the Balearic Islands south of Barcelona.
You are right about the temporary nature to many of the labels. Pequeno is perceived as a small rocky outcrop, with another one with a few goats on it (hence Goat Island) and otherwise ignored by those who travel from Mallorca to Ibiza. It's a fantasy (ish) land and for the most part only the detailed palace and the large mountain slightly to the south east of the palace/castle are featured (so far) in the novel(s). But I wanted to create a map so that I would be able to refer to it when writing so that I would not need to worry about geolographical continuity errors.
The "Eastern Peninsula" can be thought of as a separate island, but originally it was a river separating it from the mainland of the island, but then I thought that didn't make sense as rivers don't usually exist just simply cutting from coast to coast on an island. They have to start somewhere and go somewhere, so I made the peninsula into an island.
As for the plateau west of the lower river... I was mostly following a tutorial I got on DeviantArt and playing with some of the things they suggested and that seemed as good a place as any to practice putting a plateau. No need for a plateau there (aside from the temporary label of plateau!) In fact a lot of the details on the map come from reading through that tutorial and giving many of the techniques a try. Not because those elements were necessary, but so I could just learn by doing. The northern mountains are partly due to the plot-necessary-point that there are all kinds of submerged rocks in the north-western bay. I tried to envision what it would look like, though I was thinking those were more like hills than mountains, but came out looking more mountainesque than I intended.
The variety of cultural references are integral to the story line, as the island was settled by individuals from most of the cultures ringing around the Mediterranean -- over 2700 years of settlement on the island, so it will have a unique assemblage of culturally diverse names attached to the different areas. The Estolian language is unique with its own character set. The population is only 13,323 (in the year 2022), and the island is a little larger than Oahu, but not by much. I appreciate the insights! Thanks so much for your comments. They're very helpful.
Eri, thank you so much. Time is the grand master, is it not? As a full time school teacher, working on writing a 7-volume set of novels, my time is definitely at a premium. I've commissioned a couple of wonderful people from this website to make me a much better map than I have the time to create myself. But I'm also super interested in learning how to make maps because that is interesting in its own right! AND the people here are truly awesome! I'm floored by how wonderful this community is!
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