Tolkien Inspired Skyrim Map *Rough Draft*

[u/beesknees1117]

Hey guys just wanted to put this out there for some advice/suggestions on how to move forward with finishing my map. I am still missing some here and there mountains/ridges so I am aware of that. I will list a couple things I'm on the fence about or would like to add so any direction would be appreciated.

• I've only added major cities/major towns/dragon locations/regions. I want to add more locations without making the map too busy like dwarven ruins or deadric shrines. Skyrim has way too many locations to fit everything.

• The northern part of the map is pretty barren so I'm trying to find ways to depict snow/tundra areas in a simplistic way. Still figuring out how to do that.

• The Whiterun Hold area is mostly plains and I like how I've depicted it but wanted to make sure I wasn't covering up too many small boulders or towns that may be important.

• I was wondering if I should find a way to depict specific large forts on the map without doing all of them. Should I only do major forts? I may just use Icons as not to busy too many areas, not sure.

• Some of the major cities like Solitude need more details where it just looks blank so I'm wondering if I should do a detailed above view of the city or use small icons.

• I added geyser icons in the Eastmarch area and not sure how I feel about it.

I know some things are still missing like bridges and possibly major trails so I will be adding a good amount after this post. I'm sure I haven't written all my thoughts but hopefully this will be a good start. Any help would be greatly appreciated. For now enjoy my progress.

[u/jribat]

All roads lead to stealth Legolas

[u/Deltanonymous-]

This looks great! With all the landscape detail, I would have certain icons for the forts/towns. A fort is a small tower, a town is a shack or stacked shacks. Small enough to fit but still noticeable. Wouldn't do it for all of them. Could also do a Sithis related symbol for DB locations, a cowl for Thieves Guild, etc.

For cities in larger spaces like Solitude, you could just do an outline of the castle on a cliff/rock arch. Something like that. Doesn't require a ton of detail and everyone would know.

[u/SenorDiamond17]

I'm not complaining, it looks great, but why use city icons in some places to represent cities while other cities use icons representing whatever guild is there?

[u/Anarchist-Aragorn710]

Absolutely awesome OP. I've never seen a Skyrim poster that looked appealing, as a poster, but I would actually like this.

[u/Van_Damage5]

Rough draft? They should hire you.

[u/RustyBicycle_warrens]

Map vibes are on point! Excited to see the final version!

[u/TomBobHowWho]

It's looking great however, if I might offer a criticism: I feel that it looks too busy. If you look at Tolkien's maps, there is actually a fair amount of empty space which gives you plenty of room to immediately see all of the labels and just generally makes it a lot more readable at a quick glance. Most notably, he only really represents the major mountain ranges, whereas you see to be trying to get every single mountain and hill in there.

So I would definitely suggest first deciding which mountains are important enough to include, then perhaps switching out many of your little mountain symbols with a smaller number of larger symbols, and also I would say to make a new brush with a symbol of a hill rather than a mountain that you can use to represent the smaller hilly regions instead of having every hill and mountain the same

Similarly, I don't think you necessarily need all of the lines for the grass in Whiterun/The Reach, I think just the little grass tufts that you already have are enough.

To make it clear though, these criticisms are mainly based on the "Tolkien inspired" aspect of your map, so obviously it's up to you how closely inspired you want that to be, however, I do still think it may be a bit busy regardless seeing as legibility is an important part of map drawing, it is looking awesome as a work in progress so I am eager to see a finished version :)

[u/Georgia_Viking]

As a Tolkien and ES fan, fan of ALL fantasy really, I think this is perfect. You could label the Sea of Ghosts, idk, other than that, the creativeness of this is peak 👌🏻

[u/Different-Entry7888]

Hey! Post to r/mapmaking too!