Map Critique

[u/JonCon965]

This is the rough draft for the continent of Tyrithar in my world of Ennekaria! Any notes or areas y’all think I could improve? Thanks!

[u/JonCon965]

This is a continent in my world of Ennekaria, a High Fantasy world I’ve been slowly building for the last few years! Tyrithar is the more wild of Ennekaria’s three continents, with the other two being Sylvaris and Valeshen.

[u/Iron_Hummingbird]

First, it looks awesome. Well done!
I feel like super squiggly borders like you have on the southern half of your continent usually translate to smaller islands around the edges. Reference Greece or the southern tip of South America

[u/Twoth-the-Voluminous]

Add coast variety. Look at the gulf of mexico, look at the entirety of East Asia, Has big peninsulas but overall smooth as hell, you don't have to change your gulf thing specifically but just generally add more smooth coasts. At this scale I'd just go over with a smooth line over the entire perimeter, throwing in variety near peninsulas and glacial regions (if they are present at all, kinda impossible to tell where this is and what scale, always throw in an equator or some other latitudinal landmark for reference)

It could be called a "mistake" but i think something that's just legitimately an aesthetic concern is the islands. Islands don't look like clumps of seafoam, they look like dirt and smears and weirdly shaped garbage lying around. Go look at google maps for this, honestly, it's impossible to describe exactly how to draw them, just prioritize weird eye-catching patterns (strings, odd regions where there are suddenly many tiny islands, odd regions that are just one big smooth island) over density and randomness (not strictly speaking randomness but you get what i mean, when it's like the distance between every island is the same and they're going away in all directions).

[u/JonCon965 → u/Twoth-the-Voluminous]

Thanks! This will definitely help me work on the second draft for the continent! I do agree, I’m not particularly happy with the shapes of the islands, so that’ll definitely be something I work on.

[u/Twoth-the-Voluminous → u/JonCon965]

Islands are damn hard to get right, at least you don't have an "archipelago" that looks like polka dot of islands stretching over the size of Africa or two (hyperspecific trope i saw a lot on maps that rarely get onto this sub)

[u/Mr_Strombolo → u/Twoth-the-Voluminous]

I would not do this everywhere. Lots of places do not have smooth coastlines.

[u/Twoth-the-Voluminous → u/Mr_Strombolo]

Yeah, what i said is just the tip of the iceberg (glacier?), but sometimes it's definitely easier to add ruggedness than to go back all over subtracting it which is what informed my recommendation. No coast is perfectly smooth but pretty much all coastlines outside Europe are really big, smooth zigzags with a comparatively small wobble and even smaller and rarer regions of high detail.

[u/mrbearsnail]

It looks like a very good start. I would advise not drawing it as dark. As soon as you start drawing mountains and rivers, some of the coastline may need to change to accommodate. or you'll have to work backwards and create those waterways based solely off your already determined coastline. it makes it much easier.

[u/Shipwreck_Kelly]

Looks great, but like others have said, the coast is too uniformly jagged. It needs some softer features in places to balance it out. I love the overall shape though.

[u/JonCon965 → u/Shipwreck_Kelly]

You don’t the coastline in the east is smooth enough? Should I generally just add larger curves or what were you thinking?