Eldrydia -- Topographical

[Peter Toth]

Hello Guild,

Originally, I hesitated to post this map to the Guild. A couple weeks back, someone had posted a highly outstanding atlas-style map and yet was told he'd "never receive a particular member's commission." However, for those of you Guild members who relish the atlas-style map, I've changed my mind and decided to post my latest project, a continent called "Eldrydia" that occupies an Earth-like planet around a nearby sun-like star. Gradually, the gold and silver mines are becoming mined and the surrounding land settled. I know the names of the towns are rather nonsensical; I haven't yet forayed into conlang.

I used Wilbur and GIMP to create this map.

I hope you enjoy.

Peter

[Ilanthar]

It's a nice atlas style but some elements are a bit too saturated (like the roads and the darkest sea blue) to my taste.

[OUdaveguy98]

I've worked as both a military navigator and a professional geographer and I really like hypsometric tinting and shaded relief maps. So here's my two cents. I really like the landform you've created; it's very believable. I echo the comments on the color saturation. It's very bright, and a softer, more muted color palette would make this almost indistinguishable from one of Goode's World Atlas maps. For the hypsometric maps I made and uploaded here last year I just used the eyedropper tool in Adobe Illustrator and replicated a color palette from another topographical artist's work that I really liked. Keep up the great work!

[Charerg]

The map looks great, although I agree with prior comments that the colours are maybe a touch too saturated. But the topography is solid, and very believable as well!

[- JO -]

Now that's an eye-catching map ! A daring choice of color, but very profitable! Bravo for the relief and the perspective effect!

[krostatina]

I don't know about other people, I for one like the idea of an atlas style map of my world, even if it is not what I personally would consider attempting. Keep up your work, who knows, I might commission you one day (if you dial down the saturation of that red ).

[waldronate]

You've made good progress on the Wilbur parts of the process, with very little in the way of artifacts. Two technical aspects that you might want to work on are the resolution of the map and the color schemes.

The rivers and graticule are both aliased (that is, both show obvious steps where the pixels that make up the vector elements change direction). Your text is also a little faded and spidery, but I suspect that's GIMP's text engine. One way around both of these issues is to work at a higher resolution than your final product. If you generate your rivers and graticule at twice the resolution of your intended end product, work at that resolution in GIMP for your normal operations, and then reduce the resolution back down to your final resolution at the end, the aliasing will be less obvious. Another option for reducing aliasing would be to trace the vector elements as vectors using some external piece of software, but I don't know of a good tool for doing that.

Your color in the ocean depths is oversaturated with relation to the land. It's generally a good idea to keep things close to the same tone if possible because it allows readers of the map to look at the elements that matter to them rather than dragging the eye towards what may be unimportant details such as broad abyssal plains. Many atlas maps are done with desaturated colors for the landforms because they can then reserve more saturated colors for things like areas of interest. I also find it difficult to see the rivers with their color being so close tonally to the land colors, but that may just be a problem with my elderly eyeballs.

The attention to detail on the text is very nice and not something that I ever managed to achieve myself.

[Peter Toth]

Hello to all Guild members:

Thank you so much for responding and offering a positive, supportive community that is conducive to learning the art and science of cartography.

I've resubmitted the map and toned down the intense blue shades of my deep oceans and the bright red lines denoting roadways, hoping to create a map that is much more pleasing to the eye.

And yes, I'll continue submitting my atlas-style maps; I suppose they're much more greatly appreciated than I had originally figured.

Thank you for the critiques and for your interest.

Peter

[Eilathen]

I think you should always post your maps here! This is, after all, the cartographer's guild! Even if some people don't like a particular style (and, btw, I think it's totally ok to not like a style and it is also ok to discuss that), there's also always people who like that style. You can only ever improve/profit from other people's take on your works (and yes, it should be constructive criticism, of course).

Now all that being said, I think that member you hinted at in your first post might have been me. In that regard, I'd appreciate it (if it was my post you had in mind) if you wouldn't misrepresent/misquote what i said. Context is important, always!
So you might want to refrain from such off-hand comments, it's not really all that helpful and it's very impolite to put words into other people's mouths. If you want to include something like that at all (and i am not sure it's even a good idea or helpful), than you might want to really quote what has been said (including context).
At least that's my 2 cents. I'm not a Moderator or Admin, so you can, of course, freely ignore.

As to the map, I really think that your second, reworked version looks a lot better. And as others have said, I like the overall continental-shape a lot. Do you have lore/history for this world? Or is it "only" map-practice?

[Eowyn Cwper]

Much better! If you allow me to nitpick, here's a few suggestions.
— I would still tone down the brighter green outline;
— you can't see the rivers at all in the yellow altitude layers, which I think is a shame because they're probably very well made if I trust your relief ^^ ;
— I would make the city label font bolder or small caps (the one you picked doesn't look consistent with the style, in my opinion);
— last but least, the elevation key; the border looks very pixelated, and I would not go for a smooth color gradient.
I hope it's not too much. They're not big problems, the map as a whole already looks awesome!