The Continent of Vanor

[Locution]

So it has been an extremely long time since I have posted anything in this community.

When I was first drawn here by my desire to learn how to make fantasy maps (almost 9 years ago), I was completely amazed but the fact that there was a whole community of people with the same interest as me. Shortly after I was blown away, and simultaneously devastated by how supremely talented everyone here was. All I had was a rough drawing made with a Bic pen and some Crayola pencil crayons. Suddenly my map that I had been so proud of all of a sudden seemed shabby and juvenile. Thankfully, the anonymity of the internet protected my ego enough to not completely give up and I began pouring through posts and tutorials to try and learn how you all had created such beautiful maps.Slowly, I started to learn how to use Photoshop, and through the aid of some very talented, patient, and gracious artists, I began improving my map. It has gone through many, MANY, iterations and has stolen hundreds of hours of my life, but today I am cautiously pleased to say it is finished.

I am no artist. I can not draw or paint or even use Photoshop very well. What I have created, I have done so through trial and error, dumb luck, or perseverance, and mostly through the use of resources designed by actual accomplished artists and the mimicry of techniques I have seen used in all the amazing maps I have encountered in this community. Of these artists, none deserves more credit than Ramah. When I first laid eyes on his map of Vaniya, I was immediately enamored with the style. So much so that I reached out and gained permission to use his brushes. Ramah, without you I would never have gone anywhere with this map. I firmly believe that. I can't thank you enough.

There's not much to say about the backstory for this map. This started out as a campaign world for a D&D campaign, evolved into a world I had intended to write a book about, and has morphed into something unrelated to both. I guess I still hope to write a book based in this world some day but in 9 years the only thing I have worked on relative to the book is this map.

I have always been drawn to maps, particularly fantasy maps, but I have also always enjoyed geography, anthropology, history, and language (though I only speak English). I borrowed heavily from real world cultures when designing the world, and real world places when naming. You will see Nordic, Celtic, Baltic, Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, and Germanic influences. Some place names were taken from google maps and changed slightly, some were just straight -up stolen, some were created by mashing some words together using google translator, some are borrowed from popular culture and some are just made up. I apologize if I have butchered your language. Forgive my ignorance, I intend no disrespect.

Anyways, I don't know what else to say (I've said enough already). I can answer any questions as they come and am always open to criticism and suggestions.

tl;dr Hi again! Here's my map!

[Jaxilon]

Well done! Beautiful job.

[Tenia]

An excellent job you can be proud of! You made a very good use of the brushes, the overall looking is great, details and labels are neat and clear and I dig the work you did on toponyms

[Wingshaw]

Fantastic work, Locution: your map-making skills are very impressive.

The only nitpick I have about this map is that, on my computer at least, it is hard to appreciate it when the image is so large: it takes quite a while just to load the image and then enlarge it enough to see the details. Would a smaller resolution image be possible, at all?

Wingshaw

[Gidde]

Wow! This is beautiful! The naming scheme looks very nice, and that is a wonderful write-up you did Have some rep!

[Kellerica]

Congrats on taming this beast - it sounds like it has been in the makings for a while! Good use of Ramah's mountains, I'm glad to see people still get use out of those. I'll have to second Wingshaw on the resolution, though, I think you could most likely drop it down to half and still be able to see all the details you need to see just fine. The texture used here is pretty blurry too at 100%, so it would likely benefit as well.

Very impressive work all and all, glad you decided to return here again!

[Texas Jake]

This is a truly amazing map. Done overly downplay your artistic ability, it takes an artistic eye to put something like this together. Your work shows ability and the diligence of commitment and hard work. I applaud you (and rep you).

[Robulous]

Very impressive, super detailed, I love it!

Couple issues: the names of cities etc is very small. You have plenty of space to play with, I'd make the cities text a bit bigger.

Also, classic issue I've been guilty of and watch out for: you have white text and white dots on yellow-ish parchment paper, which in practice is impossible. Your lightest colours should only be as light as the paper. In Photoshop I solve this by putting my "paper" layer on the top and set to Darker Colour. That way nothing can be lighter than the paper.

[kacey]

Really nice job!

[Locution]

Thanks everyone for the high praise. I'm pleased you all like it!

Fantastic work, Locution: your map-making skills are very impressive.

The only nitpick I have about this map is that, on my computer at least, it is hard to appreciate it when the image is so large: it takes quite a while just to load the image and then enlarge it enough to see the details. Would a smaller resolution image be possible, at all?

Wingshaw

Congrats on taming this beast - it sounds like it has been in the makings for a while! Good use of Ramah's mountains, I'm glad to see people still get use out of those. I'll have to second Wingshaw on the resolution, though, I think you could most likely drop it down to half and still be able to see all the details you need to see just fine. The texture used here is pretty blurry too at 100%, so it would likely benefit as well.

Very impressive work all and all, glad you decided to return here again!

Thanks for the suggestion, I will see about uploading a lower res version for easier viewing.

Very impressive, super detailed, I love it!

Couple issues: the names of cities etc is very small. You have plenty of space to play with, I'd make the cities text a bit bigger.

Also, classic issue I've been guilty of and watch out for: you have white text and white dots on yellow-ish parchment paper, which in practice is impossible. Your lightest colours should only be as light as the paper. In Photoshop I solve this by putting my "paper" layer on the top and set to Darker Colour. That way nothing can be lighter than the paper.

Thanks Robulous! I will adjust the text size and see how I like it. I intentionally made it small to reduce clutter but perhaps I went a little too far. As for the white on the darker parchment, I'm not entirely sure I know exactly what you mean. Are you referring to the mountain, forest and water labels and the dashed line for the roads? If so I will see what I can do. I quite like the look of the light blue labels on the darker blue ocean layer. My problem with the labels has been keeping them easy to see on top of a busy background. This is especially true for the forests and mountain labels. I tried stroking them like the hill labels and wasn't happy about how it looked. I'll play around with the Darker Colour suggestion as well.

I definitely appreciate the critique. It's so valuable to get the opinions of people who actually know what they are doing