Hey Peter,

Thanks for the response.

Quote Originally Posted by Peter Toth View Post
...Personally, I liked the very first submission, before you added those terraces to substitute for your mountains... I believe you could add to its effectiveness with a border, a scale, and perhaps a few other embellishments such as a flag or other graphic pertaining to your employer's website "This Used to be About Dungeons."...
Peter
I agree with both of these comments. I'll be sticking with the first style for the hills.
I plan to add the border, scale, title, etc. last, after finalizing everything else. I also want to add some other cute little embellishments. Little critters dotted around the place. Stuff like that.

Quote Originally Posted by Peter Toth View Post
...By the way, what software are you using? Just curious....
Peter
I'm making the bulk of this map using QGIS 3.16. Its intended use is for mapping real-world data, but it's also handy for drawing fantasy maps for the following reasons:
  • Firstly, compared to Inkscape or Illustrator, it is easier to draw and edit organic vector shapes. QGIS has some fantastic built-in tracing tools, and it's polygon-smoothing algorithm has much nicer results than Inkscape's.
  • Secondly, there is better control over the layers and rendering. And fancy stuff can be done with metadata.
  • Finally, the styling of entire groups of objects can be edited at once, which is great for someone as chronically indecisive as me. As an example, both the hachure-style and terrace-style hills up above are rendered from the same polygon data. They just have different styles applied.

However, QGIS does have a few weaknesses that make it unsuitable as the only tool for drawing a map:
  • The main issue is that QGIS' text placement is a bit janky and often needs some manual adjustment.
  • Additionally, while QGIS has a built in Print Layout editor -- where borders, scales, titles, and the like can be added -- it feels fairly limited.

The solution I've found is to export the map from QGIS as a pdf. This pdf can then be imported as vector or raster into other artistic software for finishing touches.