Escarand - Regional map

[Sel93]

Hi!

It's been a long time since I last posted. This is my new attempt. I don't have much time right now but I will write a little more about it later. Until then, I'd appreciate some feedback!

[Sel93]

Minor update also to push this thread up a little. Edited the mountains to make them look more solid and changed the tone of the water and the water at the coastline to improve the connection from ocean to land.

Also I wanted to describe a little bit about my world: It is meant to be for a fantasy novel I'm attempting to write. Originally I wanted to go for a tokienesque style but I soon figured out that I was not good at drawing icons, so I went for this more graphical style and I think it worked out quite well. Im not so sure about the forests yet and I want to find ways to make the landscape more unique and find a better way to integrate the cities and villages, different icons, fortresses etc.

Feedback appreciated!

[Ilanthar]

That's pretty cool sel96! I love the waters. Colors and mountains are very well done too. I think the bevel effect is too obvious on the coastlines, though.

[jbgibson]

Yeah, the bevel is perfect... If you want 100% of the coasts to be cliffs :-). That, you are representing just right. Since I guess that's not the case, I'm willing to read it as an intentional style and run with it. All of it is a good look together, though the canvas like texture and landforms say "painting" and those coasts look, I dunno, "generated"? It's funny - I can see the forests clearly at thumbnail size, but at full size they are blurred enough to disappear into the general texture. That's just my impression.

I have to say though, my subconscious isn't buying those two long rivers. Absent any indication otherwise the central lake 'reads' as sea level, so the West-central one rises on an isthmus what, fifty miles from the sea, in modest highlands, wanders to a mere thirty from the sea, then 'chooses' to run another thousand miles to its mouth-- which terrain and shading seems to indicate isn't drastically lower than its source? One could engineer a set of hills and plains that would do that, it would just seem... Engineered. Unnatural. The east one in Deldras is not as extreme, but landforms still don't 'read' as sloping ever downward from a mere few hundred miles from a coast, waaaay downhill to the mouth, skirting that bay by what, fifty miles? To my eye anyway. If that southwestern Eldaron coast were honkin' big alps/himalayas affairs, maybe. Thought of that way does my impression make sense?

Ever the king of rationalization :-) I would be wholly in favor of a story behind your topography that MAKES all that true yet believable... Maybe the central lake is way lower than it seems. Maybe there's a subtle tilt *just so*. There's probably ways to force a viewer to see such rationalizing characteristics... altitude tinting, or outright labeling, like '475 meters below sea level'.

Curious... what do the dark circles signify?

Great look- maybe a testimony that I'm led to stare at it long enough for the mild river-oddness to bug me :-).