QED’s Maps

[QED - Iltazyara]

Hello! Since I spend so much time mapping, and I’ve reached my sixth iteration of my world-map I feel I should start, maybe, seeking feedback.

Since I don’t want to flood this immediately, I’ll post the two areas completed since the transfer to iteration six. Sans text, as it gets in the way (even if I plan for it in design sometimes).

http://i.imgur.com/OJ5ksM3.jpg
This image is technically three inches across and two inches tall. Not sure I would print it that small, but that's what photoshop says.

http://i.imgur.com/uajwCrv.jpg?1
Where Ventora involved me revamping an old area into with new tricks for this iteration, this was done with it at the start.

These two maps do border each other, as they are made in the same document. I separate them as they are different regions, and were completed in different sessions.
Any criticisms are welcome, as are any questions.

[Calen]

Firstly the map looks nice. :)
I would question what the scale of the map is. Are you trying to keep it in scale or is it more relational? If the distance between those houses is a days journey or so you might want to shrink the size of your cities. They look like they would take a few days to navigate.

You might also consider upping the size of your forest trees to be more in line with the houses or to do something with the houses to make them appear more town like.
Hope that helps.

[Aedilred]

I really like your mountains, and I might steal that colouring technique for my own. Overall the maps look good.

It might be an idea to tone down the intensity of your coloured backgrounds - the green land and blue sea. At the moment they are quite bright and this gives the map large areas of distracting flat colour which make it harder for the features to stand out. This is more apparent on the second one (as the forests and hills break the first one up a bit) but I think both could benefit from it. Also perhaps giving it a slightly more variegated appearance would help: it looks like there is some in the green already but reducing the intensity further would emphasise that I think, and perhaps breaking it up even more with lightened borders around roads and rivers, plains in a lighter green, beaches, etc. might help. Perhaps colouring in individual trees rather than just the forests would also make a difference - this might seem like a bit of a faff but if you have the trees in their own layer it's not actually that hard with judicious use of the magic wand/inverse selection.

With your cities, it looks like you're using brushes from different sets and different scales (in fact, since I'm familiar with those brushsets, I'm pretty sure that's the case, and have done so myself). The problem you face there is that scaling down a larger brush to meet the same scale as a smaller one also reduces the size of the lines, and that gives them a fainter and slightly fuzzier appearance compared to the brushes which are naturally smaller. You can get away with this a bit over a whole map but when you have different buildings right next to each other that were originally different scales it becomes obvious. It's clearest on the second map where the tall castle looks out of place next to the town buildings. Unfortunately there is no easy way round this: you could try moving the larger-scale elements to their own layer and then putting a 1px stroke in the same colour round them, or tracing over them yourself with the brush, but unless you're working at a very high dpi that probably won't work. It's an issue I've faced with my own maps and eventually I've just been reduced to drawing my own elements by hand on paper and scanning them in.

Another thing is that - like the flat colours - lots of identical copies make elements of the map look rather digital, and while if they're spaced out around the map they can fool people, when they're clustered together like some of your houses are, the eye picks it up quite easily. I'd be tempted to reduce the number of buildings in some of your towns and cities, since they are only representative in any case, and try to make sure they're all different in each one.

That probably seems like a lot of criticism but I do think they're good as things are: it's just that I've encountered some of the same things in my own maps and so they jump out at me. There are some really good features on there and I like your rivers in particular.

[QED - Iltazyara]

Firstly the map looks nice. :)
I would question what the scale of the map is. Are you trying to keep it in scale or is it more relational? If the distance between those houses is a days journey or so you might want to shrink the size of your cities. They look like they would take a few days to navigate.

You might also consider upping the size of your forest trees to be more in line with the houses or to do something with the houses to make them appear more town like.
Hope that helps.

Nice to hear you like them! I've never tried to keep it to a specific scale (the style I'm using isn't suited for that, in the marker sense at the very least), but I did have a rough 100 mile scale around somewhere; until I accidentally deleted the object. It was a pain to make, so I'm not looking forward to redoing it.

The villages (single/double house markers) on the second map are meant to be roughly a half days travel apart, with that map being about forty or fifty miles wide.


I really like your mountains, and I might steal that colouring technique for my own. Overall the maps look good.

I've been doing my mountains the same way for a long time; they just started looking right when I added a snowcap; snow overlay just adds too it. There's also the rough brown overlay, which is just to shade the grass colours underneath.



It might be an idea to tone down the intensity of your coloured backgrounds - the green land and blue sea. At the moment they are quite bright and this gives the map large areas of distracting flat colour which make it harder for the features to stand out. This is more apparent on the second one (as the forests and hills break the first one up a bit) but I think both could benefit from it. Also perhaps giving it a slightly more variegated appearance would help: it looks like there is some in the green already but reducing the intensity further would emphasise that I think, and perhaps breaking it up even more with lightened borders around roads and rivers, plains in a lighter green, beaches, etc. might help. Perhaps colouring in individual trees rather than just the forests would also make a difference - this might seem like a bit of a faff but if you have the trees in their own layer it's not actually that hard with judicious use of the magic wand/inverse selection.

Sadly, your suggestion with the trees doesn't work; the colouring comes out with jagged lines, I'd have to colour each one individually. Seeming as I already go half crazy placing the many thousands that I do, I don't think I will. I do agree it would look nice though.

I've toned done the green in the grass layer slightly, as your suggestion, and it is somewhat less distracting. There is a limit to how far I can take that, as it gets blended with the texture layer, which yellows it quite extensively.

I also did a outer glow on the rivers, very minor but it is a slight improvement. I would do the same for the roads, but that will have to wait for when I have time to redo them completely, as they are currently on my Places layer; which is not suited for being given such a highlight.



With your cities, it looks like you're using brushes from different sets and different scales (in fact, since I'm familiar with those brushsets, I'm pretty sure that's the case, and have done so myself). The problem you face there is that scaling down a larger brush to meet the same scale as a smaller one also reduces the size of the lines, and that gives them a fainter and slightly fuzzier appearance compared to the brushes which are naturally smaller. You can get away with this a bit over a whole map but when you have different buildings right next to each other that were originally different scales it becomes obvious. It's clearest on the second map where the tall castle looks out of place next to the town buildings. Unfortunately there is no easy way round this: you could try moving the larger-scale elements to their own layer and then putting a 1px stroke in the same colour round them, or tracing over them yourself with the brush, but unless you're working at a very high dpi that probably won't work. It's an issue I've faced with my own maps and eventually I've just been reduced to drawing my own elements by hand on paper and scanning them in.

The buildings are all from the same brushset, but I have resized them myself. I rescaled almost all of them some time ago; but I seem to have missed the largest town one, and it is oversized compared to the rest now that I look at it.

The fuzzyness is only visible to me at all on the castle in the second map, I will try to reduce that. Thankfully there is little call to use that brush, and it is hideously oversized compared to all of the others.



Another thing is that - like the flat colours - lots of identical copies make elements of the map look rather digital, and while if they're spaced out around the map they can fool people, when they're clustered together like some of your houses are, the eye picks it up quite easily. I'd be tempted to reduce the number of buildings in some of your towns and cities, since they are only representative in any case, and try to make sure they're all different in each one.

While I understand your meaning, and I agree with it in the cases of forests where I try to avoid clumping same type trees, in the larger towns I put rows of the same house because house tended to look the same. As for the number of buildings, I'm trying to use that as a "That city has more buildings than that one, so it is clearly the more populous and important city!" Which I believe it achieves.




That probably seems like a lot of criticism but I do think they're good as things are: it's just that I've encountered some of the same things in my own maps and so they jump out at me. There are some really good features on there and I like your rivers in particular.

To me, that amount of criticism just says you liked the map enough to give judgment on it, and they were good points. My rivers are... Well, in that version they were literally single colour lines, and all I did to make them interesting was try to follow natural river placement and merging.

Updated the maps in the main post, they won't be exactly the same, as the maps are really me just cutting and saving sections of the whole map as jpegs, and I don't want to bother getting my selections exactly the same each time.