The Sultanate of Sharessan - fantasy map

[- Max -]

Hey guys,

Here's my last map, the Sultanate of Sharessan, a personnal project done with Photoshop. My main goal was to create a fantasy map in an arabic/middle east ambience.
I also wanted to experiment some new kind of work and used some shaded relief art made by the CIA between 60's and 90's (then donated to the Library of Congress) for the mountains. I mixed some of them a bit, playing with several layers and different blending modes and with color/saturation/vibrance adjustments on each of the layers on my background to obtain the kind of color/feeling I wanted to get.
I've made the nomadic tribes shields in PS, being inspired by the Tuareg/Niger crosses that I like much.

WIP thread is here. Thanks to all of those who supported and gave handy advices during the process. (Unfortunately, first WIP thread was made during the server issues so the first steps are missing due to the rollback).

Original map is 7931x5551 px, uploaded one is 50% size (hence rivers labels aren't very legible)

Comments are welcome, I hope you'll like it!

Feel free to rate, rep or run away

Sultanat de Sharessan finalsmall.jpg

[emillanjr]

Great work, I think the mountains came out amazing!

[vorropohaiah]

nice cartouche, though the background looks a bit too obviously-digital (not that that's a complaint). also, the area keys could do with being a bit starker against the map -a s they are they're quite difficult to make out at a distance, partiuclarly the capital. took me ages to find (could just be me though...)

very very nice map, and in a style we dont normally see here, which makes it all the better. I'd love to see something like this covering a larger area, like a continent, with varied terrain (would be nice what you can come up with for forests to match the style of this map). I was thinking of doing a historical regional map for a region of my world that fits in with this flavour and might try something with a similar border - imitation is the best form of flattery after all

EDIT: sorry, cant give you any rep quite yep... youre just too good!

[- Max -]

Thanks This one was kind of an experiment with the shaded relief and I'll probably give it another shot on a larger area one of these days.

[Eilathen]

A real beauty. I especially love the compass-rose.

I can't rep you atm, so have a "like" instead

[arsheesh]

The relief shading is beautiful, the color scheme is as well, you've done a great job on the labels and I really like the tribal shields too. To sum up, fantastic job! You seem to be producing fine work at a speed which outpaces my ability to rep you .

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Diamond]

Like everyone else I have to spread some love first before I can rep you, but its there in spirit.

The only thing I can say about this map is... magnificent. This one deserves a Featured Map Scroll in my opinion.

[aquarits]

I said in your WIP what i liked in your map, usualy desert looks out of some details, giving a impression of empty, But this one, looks full of details ( tnx to the nice mountains and the highlights in the reliefs).
Need to undestand how you always find a way to show that amount of water!!!

Congratz brow!

[- Max -]

Thanks guys, comments much appreciated, I'm glad you liked it! And don't worry about the rep, hopefully you'll spread me some on the next map I promise I'll wait a few days before posting another one

[CaptainSputnik]

I really love this colour palette. The font and symbols also work very well with the map. Beautiful !