Advice on my map?

[Silbrulf]

Ok... didnt want to post it until I was entirely done, but...
Also, this map is basically an "Elven-crafted map table with Dwarf-crafted location markers"

Basically, just looking for advice. Background on the world:
2000 years old (2018 to be exact... It was a number) and created by the gods. Sort of. Most current gods are invaders that changed the order of things for THEIR creations. World functions in an earth-like way, with the exception that some of the Deific changes are still normalizing. A desert stradles the southern mountains, a result of a near-god dragon destroying its surroundings in rage. the western forest turns to rainforest as it goes south, and the north has a massive arctic glacier (called the Frost) that moves 50 miles south during winter, just to melt off in spring and summer. for one week each summer and one in winter, weather becomes deadly extreme (a drought that withers unharvested crops overnight and a blizzard cold enough to make magical items brittle and weak). the glacier moves far enough south that the river near sorus is its apparent boundary.

Advice needed:
How will rivers need to "normalize"?
What colors and free font should i use for labels (I want this to be a sellable Campaign Setting eventually)?
How do I put the glacier on the map, and show its furthest reach as distinct from the glacier itself or the surrounding terrain?
How should I go about adding the accompaniments (Key, Rose, Title, and Cartouche)? Should I expand the canvas to the side a bit, or just fit it in where there's room?
Is my 4.4px/mi okay or should I go smaller next time? (Not changing it now... it was too much work as it is, lol)
Plus any suggestions/tips/tricks anyone might have for me for my next map (a local, less-accurate realm map of the Sorus-Harvest area)

I apologize for the near illegible font color, needed something now, using an autorealm font at 60 and 30px. Its a temporary measure.

Taking a bit to add the pic... the original jpg is 23.3mb (egh... I have GAMES smaller than that... lol) so I'm reexporting it to 90% quality...



Image is Copyright to myself, Silbrulf/Argentrolf/Paul Butler 3. Upload is not indication of permission to use for any purpose, implied or otherwise.
(Sorry, last time I uploaded a pic of some of my work, it was stolen and sold and I was told by a judge that the upload was "implied to be free to use"...)

[Kellerica]

Hi there, and welcome to the Guild! In the future, you might be better off posting this sort of thing to the WIP section (probably to the World/Regional mapping) rather than the How Do I?? area, since people honestly tend to be a bit more active over there... at least in my experience. The How Do I?? section is usually used to ask specific questions about some mapping detail ("how was this compass rose made?"), but the WIP area is better when you want more broad advice and feedback on how to improve a map.

In any case, since I'm not a Gimp user (at least this looks like a Gimp made piece to me, correct me if I'm wrong) I won't be able to answer all of your questions, but I'll give you what I can.

First off, you asked about rivers, and honestly the best thing I can do is point you in the direction of the River thread over at the tutorials section. That one should give you all the information you need and then some.

As for the other elements, I personally like to plan for those in advance when I first start working on a map. I'll add some lines and rectangles as placeholders from the very beginning, so I'll know to leave room for them. I usually like making my map's layout as balanced as possible. For this one, I'd most likely add a border of some sorts, and maybe a title box in the bottom right corner and a compass rose to the left, and leave it there. Or perhaps a rather small legend box to the bottom left instead of the compass... not entirely sure. Either way I think the shape of the map makes is hard to add a large legend without it looking a bit unbalanced as a whole. I think the canvas size is fine already, and the elements mentioned should fit there well enough as it is.

I also think the map most likely is a bit larger than necessary - zoomed in at 100% you are much closer than you really need to be in order to see the details. This is honestly something I did too when I first started working digitally, my first maps were so enormous that my Photoshop was constantly crashing. These days, my maps are maybe 1/3 of the size they used to be, and it works just fine. It's a natural instinct to make the piece large, but in the end it most likely doesn't need to be half as large as you think. I'd recommend trying to downsize a flattened version of the map to 50% of the original size, and seeing what it looks like. You may find it to be plenty big enough.

As for the fonts and colors, it really is a matter of taste. I personally like using pretty clear and readable serif fonts, that still have a bit of character to them (Fogle Hunter and Humane Jenson are some of my favorites). But honestly, whatever pleases your eye. And if you are planning on selling the map, then whatever you have the commercial use license to. In this type of map, I'd recommend going with a clear, light color (white, or maybe a yellow-ish hue for example) and adding it a dark outer glow, stroke or drop shadow in order to make it a bit more readable. But as I said, this is just what I would do. There are no right or wrong answers here.

One thing I'd also recommend taking a look at, is adding some texture. Even a satellite style map like this can sometimes benefit from laying some textures over it - even just some aged paper ones. Give it a try at some point!

Hope this gives you at least some ideas. Keep at it!

[Rochnan]

Advice needed:
How will rivers need to "normalize"?
What colors and free font should i use for labels (I want this to be a sellable Campaign Setting eventually)?
How do I put the glacier on the map, and show its furthest reach as distinct from the glacier itself or the surrounding terrain?
How should I go about adding the accompaniments (Key, Rose, Title, and Cartouche)? Should I expand the canvas to the side a bit, or just fit it in where there's room?
Is my 4.4px/mi okay or should I go smaller next time? (Not changing it now... it was too much work as it is, lol)
Plus any suggestions/tips/tricks anyone might have for me for my next map (a local, less-accurate realm map of the Sorus-Harvest area)

What do you mean with 'normalize'?

I tend to get free fonts from fontsquirrel a lot. Here are some of the calligraphic fonts. The most important thing is that it fits the style of your world. The second most important thing i that you pick something legible, so zoom out and see if you can read it at smaller sizes or from farther away.

You had a thread concerning the glacier, and I replied on there. Was that helpful?

I would say add the key and such to the side. That way you'll keep the map image clean.

I think the distances between everything feel suitable for the scale you're working at. It's uncluttered, there's a clear sense of distance between things.

My biggest advice is to imagine how people will travel or even settle between the big locations like Harvest-Stonefoot-Sorus and also what each location adds to the map. Stonefoot is obviously a military place, but what are places like Haven or Riverside known for?

[Azélor]

The scale of the continent feels wrong. How big is it supposed to be? If the glacier moves 50 miles south, where is it standing on you map?
As the glacier move south, it literally grinds everything in his path : trees, hills, cities...
When thew ice melts, the area free of the glacier is covered with debris (mostly rocks). Cities cannot exist in that zone, neither forests.
And there would be lots and lost of lakes. A lot more than in Finland because the deglaciation happens not once a few thousand year but every year.

A one week drought is a pretty short one. Unless the heat is very intense, this is usually not a problem. For example, some mediteranean climates receive very little precipitation during the whole summer Los Angeles for example : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles#Climate

In winter you said that magic items break because of the cold, but what about normal items? How cold is that? Does this affect the whole continent?


For the labels, I would recommend to do like Kellerica said or using black/dark grey.


Where to put the elements on the map is up to you. Both option are viable. If you have a large empty spot, you can place them there.

[Silbrulf]

What do you mean with 'normalize'?

Basically, they are where the gods put them... Not where they would naturally develop. Just wondering where and how long it would be for them to alter their courses to where nature would have them.

You had a thread concerning the glacier, and I replied on there. Was that helpful?

Actually, yes. Thank you.

My biggest advice is to imagine how people will travel or even settle between the big locations like Harvest-Stonefoot-Sorus and also what each location adds to the map. Stonefoot is obviously a military place, but what are places like Haven or Riverside known for?

I haven't included yet, but the color of the tokens themselves have meaning. For example, riverside is a decommisioned "border" fort against Sorus. Haven is a new settlement where the recently displaced elven race is trying to rebuild. Lots of stuff in there that makes more sense in the world than it does just looking without story context.

The scale of the continent feels wrong. How big is it supposed to be? If the glacier moves 50 miles south, where is it standing on you map?

It's drawn at about 4-4.5px per mile. And I ended up leaving it off until i can find a way to "whitewash" the terrain without fading it.

As the glacier move south, it literally grinds everything in his path : trees, hills, cities...
When the ice melts, the area free of the glacier is covered with debris (mostly rocks). Cities cannot exist in that zone, neither forests.
And there would be lots and lost of lakes. A lot more than in Finland because the deglaciation happens not once a few thousand year but every year.

That's about how I've been handling it in the campaign; people may settle there, but they don't typically survive it long. As for the lakes, would it work saying that the glacier has graveled the regions to the north and the moisture gets absorbed into a high water table (like a gravelly swamp without flora)?

A one week drought is a pretty short one. Unless the heat is very intense, this is usually not a problem. For example, some mediteranean climates receive very little precipitation during the whole summer...

In winter you said that magic items break because of the cold, but what about normal items? How cold is that? Does this affect the whole continent?

The drought is the worst heat there is, dry, triple-digit twenties in the shade, causing even major rivers to run low. The winter extremes are the exact opposite; arctic winds, even good steel becoming incredibly brittle with the moisture of your hands being enough to freeze to the metal (the RL joke of **** freezing before it hits the ground is actually true during the week of The Freeze. Blizzards become bad enough that Sorus has created a Legion out of Winter Fort for the sole purpose of making relief patrols to small hamlets and towns that might otherwise fail.

Otherwise, the glacier stops just short of the river north of Sorus, the weather extremes effect the entire continent (less-so the regions south of the southern mountain range), and most of the places have an in-world reason for being (either because of an outside event, or deific intervention).

Thank you all for the replies