Mapping the southern kingdoms of Eruwoen

[Nyasupan]

Hello dear reader,
I decided to open this thread to share the progress on my mapping endevour so that I could get critiques and advice from more experienced map makers. I'm not a priofessional artist or illustrator, I'm a DM from Italy that scribbled some rooms on a grid untill the other day and I have now decided to try my best with drawing a proper map to handout to my players. I'm a very very amateur map maker but I'm trying my best to study tutorials and reference material to produce a decent quality map for my own setting.

As you just read these maps will show regions of the continent Eruwoen, from the world of Cheangal, a personal creation for my homebrew setting. I've worked on this setting for some time tuning stuff and polish world elements. The continent has roughly the same area of Europe (I decided to go with something I'm familiar with), the southern kingdoms are the ones circled in pink and have a climate that resemble central europe with a bit of mediterranean climate splashed here and there. Here's a rough shape of this continent, I use this as a template and later refine my coast lines and shapes:



To rejuvenate my mind from writer's block, I decided to draw a map of one region in this world I'm building. Ideally this is the region where the players will start their adventure. I used Photoshop and my XP-Pen Artist 12 display Tablet to draw it. Also, I know this is an international community but I'm writing from Italy and obviously this map is meant to be read by an italian speaking player; This doesn't mean much because a lot of names of most places are fancy fantasy names but some names are in italian, I will try to translate some of the names where it's possible. Now let me introduce you to:

The Woodland Shore



The northen region of Valasea, the watchful dominion, home to the black forest Myleanore and the city of Salesin known as a center of culture and trading. The region shares borders to the north with the Seventh Kingdom of Elevrand, a monarchy devoted to the cult of dragons and magic, and the Abyssal Wastes, a vast region scarred by the horrors of past cataclysm; to the south are the other territories of the watchful dominion, the Vale of the Twins nestled through two mountain ranges where two twin peaks (no pun intended) stand out amongst the other mountains. The scale shows the distance in days of travel, 24 mi/36 km each day. Technically this map is finished in the sens that it has all the elements I want but since this was my first attempt at drawing a proper map I will for sure come back to it and tune things here and there.

This was the first regional map I've ever drawn, I tried to do the best job I could following what I studied and I hope you like this as much as I do. I will soon move on the next region and update this thread to record my work. I have a lot of questions for you experienced map makers and critique is very welcomed because I want to improve as much as I can with these maps before handing them out to my players!

[Eilathen]

Um ok, wow. If that is your "very very amateur map-maker"-map, then you'll be a great name on here very soon In other words: really good looking map!

Also: welcome, fellow DM, always nice to meet more roleplayers that love their maps I'm sure you'll feel at home here in no time. The CG is a very friendly and helpful place. Enjoy your stay with us! And give us more maps, your first one is already very good.

[Nyasupan]

Thank you! At the moment i'm trying to find better settings for my files. That first map is meant to be printed on a A2 sheet of paper so the final dimension would be 42x42 cm but with a 300 PPI resolutioon the files are becoming very very large, especially because the map for the next region would be printed ona a full sheet A2 so 59.4x42 cm and the files are very big. for that I want to try to go down to 150 PPI resolution because, if I've understood how this settings work, for a black and white clean map like 150 PPI in photoshop should be good enough.

I'm not comfrotable enough to use InDesign or Illustrator, which should give me better sized files, because I've been using photoshop for other stuff for years even though many settings still don't mean much to me, I should put more interest in those.

[Nyasupan]

The next region was a pain to layout and make it look nice so I just decided to enlarge the canvas and make it a bigger print. this version of the map will result in a print 52,5x52,5 cm drawn in photoshop with 150 PPI. Mountains and rivers are done, at least a first draft. Tomorrow i will fidn a couple hours to continue this project

[Nyasupan]

The expanded map is now 99% complete! There are still some stuff i have to finalize and other stuff that I might have to change and tune according to character backgrounds from my players but this is a great result for me. I shall now present to you:

Valasea, the Watchful Dominion



This map shows the territories along the King's Road. Half of the map was made of my first map showing the Woodland Shore to the north while the Vale of the Twins extends from Galleon's Bay, the west sea, to the south-east Islands of Opal. While the north part of the kingdom is covered by a great forest the vale is a bit more arid, having a great river running through it makes still a lush region but less forests and woods. I tried to show that with some wavy lines but I might look for a better way to show it. The Plains of Altazel to the west are another vast land without rivers or bodier of water tunnig through it and because of this barren nature is usially home to carvans of traders moving goods form the port tows of Wachefels and Lemoor to the inner cities. While the first map only showed the King's Road it being the major way connecting the cities of this region, I decided to draw minor but known path of travelling between some other cities, hopefully this helps the eyes reading the map from settlement to settlement. This map is also thought to be of assitance to traders travelling the region and having this paths showing makes even more sense. The scale shows the distance in days of travel, 24 mi/36 km each day, like in my first map.

I hope you like my latest work and feel free to give me any critique and advice, it would be much appreciated.

[Eilathen]

I think you really have a good thing going here! I love the overall atmosphere you generate with your style. You have a very own map flavor already, which i always like.
If you want a challenge, I'd love to see you try colors for your maps. Don't get me wrong, b/w maps are just as valid, of course, and you do have a good grasp on that already.

The mountains are very nice, imo. On the other hand, you might get a call from the river-police sometime soon

[Nyasupan]

Thank you very much! Coloring is something I'm a bit scared of but I will tackle that after I've honed my line art stile. I think a couple mountain ranges are betther than the others but It's improving, I still have a problem with the ending part of those mountain ranges or the parts near the coast. At the moment I'm also trying my best at implementing cliffs on the coast in other maps.

I'm curious about this river-police you're talking about, do you see many problems with the rivers? Are there inconsistencies with the geography of the rivers? I would really like to hear the opinion of someone better than me at this, I'm here to improve.

[XCali]

Nice. I feel you have a solid grasp on your style here.

I do feel the Wall is a different perspective to the rest of the map and thus looks out of place. But, apart from some wonkiness with the perspective on the wall, I overall enjoy the rest of the map.

Good luck with the rest!
And don't be scared of coloring the map. Get some reference photo of a color theme you would enjoy for this map, and get your color palette from there. (Just a suggestion. Also, what can work is looking at the relationship of colors on some sort of reference and then do it by feel)
Either way, if you back up your Black and White map, there is then nothing to lose on a color map.


(A good start is putting the black and white map on a layer with Multiply as its mode and the color layer below that, just if you were unsure. )

[Nyasupan]

Thank you for your kind answer

I do feel the Wall is a different perspective to the rest of the map and thus looks out of place. But, apart from some wonkiness with the perspective on the wall, I overall enjoy the rest of the map.

I agree the wall looks odd, I had very few reference for that and I tried my best at drawing something like World of Warcraft, where a big POI in the map would be sticking out and usually with a top down view.
I'm away in vacation and my internet isn't that great but if you look up Borean Tundra's map, a region from World of Warcraft, and see how they represent a major hub like Warsong Hold in that you'll get the style trying to achieve. That said, my drawing skill aren't that good yet so that's something I will go back to and try to fix/refine once I complete this first set of maps.

Good luck with the rest!
And don't be scared of coloring the map. Get some reference photo of a color theme you would enjoy for this map, and get your color palette from there. (Just a suggestion. Also, what can work is looking at the relationship of colors on some sort of reference and then do it by feel)
Either way, if you back up your Black and White map, there is then nothing to lose on a color map.


(A good start is putting the black and white map on a layer with Multiply as its mode and the color layer below that, just if you were unsure. )

Colouring is something I want to test my skills with but this set of maps (the one I posted and other 2 I'm still drawing) is meant to be printed on paper that looks like a parchment, implying that this is the map that my players' characters would receive in the world of the campaign I'm building. A coloured map doesn't fit well in this world but I will for sure try to colour it for fun and to excercise.

[Nyasupan]

In this new map I tried to draw fjords and cliffs. I Like the overall shape even though I'm not that fond of those mountains on the island in the center. I'm thinking of adding some rivers here and there too, small rivers through rocks and sand, this is meant to be a tundralike region, something arid and a bit cold. I would like to know your opinions about this work in progress.