Trader's Pass WIP
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Some quick starter comments:
- the mountains look a bit lumpy. You could try spreading them into ranges to fill up the map more, and give a more realistic look
- same applies for hills. How about putting little patches of hills in many different places throughout the landscape: large groups of hills, small groups of hills, lonely isolated hills, forested hills
- if you have a wider distribution of mountains and hills, the rivers become much easier to plan. You can then add rivers that wind their way between the higher ground, giving a natural look and 'filling in' the map
- the river you have currently is much too straight. Make it wind a little bit. A very simple rule of thumb for rivers: when they're in mountainous landscape, they tend to be somewhat straight (carving channels between the ridges); in flat landscapes, they wind all over the place. In medium hilly landscape, their curvy-ness is a bit in the middle.
- your roads also seem a bit straight, but that's not as much of a problem. If you take the suggestion of spreading hills around, and then adjust your roads to wind around them a bit, they'll get better. Unlike rivers, roads *can* go over hills, but people usually take the easiest route, which tends to be to avoid going uphill. Try asking yourself these questions:
---- if I'm in Stonebrooke, why would I want to go to [Argad/Dalanor/Aldena/Kalongard, etc...]?
---- if I'm in Stonebrooke, what route would I take to get to [Argad/Dalanor/Aldena/Kalongard, etc...]?
the point of those questions is to reveal A. which routes are going to be most travelled, and B. how those routes might look (I'm thinking, for example, the road to Kalongard Mine looks like it was made by people arriving from Aldena, and not people coming from Stonebrooke or Dalanor; does this make sense within the lore of your world?)
- Also, one minor detail: why is there only one road into this landscape? What lies to the north? The east? The south?
- I love it when forests have broken edges. Your forests are all very round, which looks unnatural. You could make the borders of the forests a bit more jagged, and at the same time add broken off little copses of trees. You have some of these already, but I'd suggest putting them in higher concentrations around the edges of the forests.
- farmland: I would imagine there'd be a bit of farmland around all of the towns and villages, and that the amount of farmland would approximately reflect the size/importance of that town. Variation exists here, too, of course: a town that gets its food mostly from fishing or importing might have less need for extensive farmland.
- another thing that can really boost a map's appeal (in my opinion): adding many small villages. In Australia, the distribution of villages is similar to what you've got there; in Europe, however, the density is much much higher. It could add a lot of visual interest and potential storytelling if you add more villages.
- I am not very familiar with CC, but I do find that method for land and sea textures to be a bit bland. There's not very much variation in colour, and the edges always seem very hard (especially that light blue/dark blue boundary in the sea). If you take the above suggestions, I think the consistency of the land texture may be largely overcome, but the water might need something else. And, honestly, I'm not sure what to suggest. Islands, maybe?
- lastly, as a general rule of thumb, for any natural feature (hills, mountains, forests, deserts, landforms etc.) avoid anything that is too circular, straight-lined or 'neat'. Give them more character by breaking up their edges, giving them odd shapes, having a combination of blob-like and linear-like forms (the latter especially for mountains/hills, but I've mentioned that already)
That's quite a lot of suggestions for you to mull over. Getting things 'right' on a first try is difficult, and I'd say you've made a very good start. Hope those comments are helpful.
Wingshaw
