Quote Originally Posted by Narolas View Post
It looks like the sun has to be a little low to give such strong shadows, showing the contour of buildings and roofs. I'm going to take inspiration from such beautiful shadows and style, you've given me hope for my own "Why did I make this so big" map
Oh yes, it's a common issue here on the Guild. We should start a self-help group!

By the way, I drew these shadows assuming the light source to be elevated above the horizon at about 45°, which is roughly noon at moderate latitudes. However, the direction the light is coming from is all wrong for that to be possible: it appears to be coming from the NW. The sun only ever reaches that point (on the northern hemisphere at least) at fairly high latitudes, an then only in summer... and then only much lower above the horizon than 45°. What I did here is follow an old and tested tradition of shading things as if light were coming from the top left. Our mind's eye has become accustomed to that lighting scheme, so much so that if you were to shade a map with the light coming from somewhere near the bottom, it would kinda look inverted, as if the extrusions (houses, hills) were depressions.

Ever stared at a satellite image of, say, Mars, and asked yourself why there are these weird dome-like structures all over the place, only to realize you were actually looking at a crater, lighted from the bottom of the image? This one is a good example, and I really have to force my brain to see the depressions as depressions instead of weird hills.