A first attempt at a map

[Cekoti]

Okay, this is my first attempt at a map on the computer, and although the map I will end up using for my writing will probably change massively from this, I want to really work on my own style and get that more or less sorted, form a technique that I can follow and then maybe branch out when I'm a little better.

I have only drawn a basic outline along with drawing in potential rivers - I'm not sure if it's a little overdone, (especially in the marshy-swamp area just before the delta). I know where I want the mountains (two chains surrounding the north-east river, and then joining into one chain to edge the start of the other rivers, as well as a chain on the coast near the north-most lake, those are the main places). I have decided that I would like to follow a artistic style, and am following a great tutorial (I will post the link later). However, I am struggling to find a suitable scale to make the mountains. I have tried using brushes, and they all seem to look a little blurry to me, I have also tried drawing them, although they really are way too big (I may enlarge the map just to draw them in).
As a side note, when making your own brushes, what is the best resolution/size to make them?

Antique.png

I am open to all suggestions regarding them map
Thanks for your time,
Cekoti

[DanielHasenbos]

Seems like a fine beginning to me. The rivers look a bit wide to me, maybe narrow them down? The delta looks like it is way to far inland, and in some spots the rivers look like they split up which rivers don't do.
Besides that it looks good and I'm really curious where you take

[xpian]

Mountainous Advice:
Many of us love our isometric style mountains. I'm certainly a fan of them, and draw them all the time, but I don't like to use brushes for it:
Screen-Shot-2015-05-24-at-12.12.00-PM.jpg

However, the way you have your landmass laid out, and particularly your rivers, shows your map to be very much a top-down perspective kind of map. Personally, I feel that mixing isometric style features with top-down arrangements always looks a little awkward. If you wanted to stick with isometric looking mountains, there are ways of drawing your rivers and coastlines to make them look more "laid back"...lots of lateral curving and not many vertical runs. Torstan has some good tutorials on this.

But you can still do full top-down maps with the hand-drawn illustrative style and have mountains that blend in well. Torstan has more tutorials on this stuff, and some of my favorite work of this kind is done by Mike Schley, as seen here:
Mike-Schley----Silver-Marches-aka-Luruar.jpg

[Cekoti]

Seems like a fine beginning to me. The rivers look a bit wide to me, maybe narrow them down? The delta looks like it is way to far inland, and in some spots the rivers look like they split up which rivers don't do.
Besides that it looks good and I'm really curious where you take

Thank you, I will narrow them a bit tomorrow. I was under the impression that in swamps/deltas river bifurcation was possible, and is one of its only instances.

Mountainous Advice:
Many of us love our isometric style mountains. I'm certainly a fan of them, and draw them all the time, but I don't like to use brushes for it:
Screen-Shot-2015-05-24-at-12.12.00-PM.jpg

However, the way you have your landmass laid out, and particularly your rivers, shows your map to be very much a top-down perspective kind of map. Personally, I feel that mixing isometric style features with top-down arrangements always looks a little awkward. If you wanted to stick with isometric looking mountains, there are ways of drawing your rivers and coastlines to make them look more "laid back"...lots of lateral curving and not many vertical runs. Torstan has some good tutorials on this.

But you can still do full top-down maps with the hand-drawn illustrative style and have mountains that blend in well. Torstan has more tutorials on this stuff, and some of my favorite work of this kind is done by Mike Schley, as seen here:
Mike-Schley----Silver-Marches-aka-Luruar.jpg

Thank you for the tutorial, I'll have a look through it and see what I can do. I hadn't even thought about the difference between isometric and birds'-eye. I agree with you, that a mix looks odd, it might be why I thought it didn't quite work.
Thank you for all the help!

[Chick]

Thank you, I will narrow them a bit tomorrow. I was under the impression that in swamps/deltas river bifurcation was possible, and is one of its only instances.

A delta is actually the sand structure that forms under the sea when a sediment-laden river reaches the sea and slows down, dropping the sediment out. Over time, this builds up, and can even build up enough to reach the river surface, creating sand bars and eventually vegetation islands.

However, always keep in mind that it's the same river, it has not bifurcated, and the only reason it sort of looks like it is because the river reaches the sea before the various channels rejoin around the downstream end of the sand bars.

[Cekoti]

A delta is actually the sand structure that forms under the sea when a sediment-laden river reaches the sea and slows down, dropping the sediment out. Over time, this builds up, and can even build up enough to reach the river surface, creating sand bars and eventually vegetation islands.

However, always keep in mind that it's the same river, it has not bifurcated, and the only reason it sort of looks like it is because the river reaches the sea before the various channels rejoin around the downstream end of the sand bars.

Okay, thanks for the clarification on that!
Fixing the rivers is actually a little harder than I thought it would be, I'm really struggling on the isometric view of them.. How should I go about this?

[J.Edward]

Cekoti - post what you're trying to do and we can offer advice to help.

[Cekoti]

So I've been trying to taper the rivers (takes a long time by mouse!) Still have yet to get round to the swampy bit, and will put in lakes later, although I'm not sure if this is actually the right way to go about getting the isometric rivers?
Edit: Left a 60% opacity of the last rivers for comparison
Antique.png

[torstan]

I'd treat this as a top down map at the moment (the aspect ratio looks top down).

To make this isometric - I span it round 45 degrees. Then I scaled it vertically by 57.7% (tan(30 degrees)) Here's the result:IsoAntique.png

You notice that the vertical scaling seems to stretch things horizontally. So you're rivers look quite a but different to before. I span it round because I wanted the longest piece of the island to be horizontal - that helps sell the isometric angle.

[Chick]

That's a good job with the rivers! They join properly, taper nicely, and meander very well. Where a river reaches the sea, if you want the delta to be built up to a wetlands, you can draw multiple channels through the wetlands, that does not violate rivers splitting, just keep it within the wetland area. A good example of how to do this is to look at a braided river, then make a slice across it representing where the seacoast would be. http://nile.riverawarenesskit.org/En..._channel02.jpg