[Vazchu]

Step one before going ahead and practice backgrounds and landscapes; knowing where they might be in relation to one and another. And by that - making a map. With this done I have only one of my made-up worlds left to make a map for. Because yes, I'm too lazy to keep more than one story in the same world so instead I spend my time creating lots of them, lol.

I have yet to name many places though - as I've only named the few places where the story takes place as of now. Though I shall come back and add more names at some later point.

[COOLDOGOOO]

woah, the detail in this is stunning and i love it <333
im thinking of doing one for myself- do you have any tips ?? because this is simply amazing <33

[Vazchu]

woah, the detail in this is stunning and i love it <333
im thinking of doing one for myself- do you have any tips ?? because this is simply amazing <33

Aaw thank you! <3
Do it! It's really fun; quite time-consuming if you haven't decided much before you start. Like I hadn't for the [ first one ] I made years ago here on the oekaki board.

As for how I started out I used to watch old maps of earth since I wanted to have a more "fantasy" kind of style to them. So for that part I simply googled around for inspiration and took notes of what I liked and disliked with both styles and how others make objects in the landscape.
I can only find one of the tutorials I once read and it's [ this one here ] - though I only gathered inspiration from it since it's made for traditional work.
But the second one that I can't find right now was quite educating and went through everything from tectonic plates and what kind of environment it would be across the globe. I loved it and if I manage to find it I will post it here. Anyhow, to summarize it for short it was pretty much to start off the process by making the tectonic plates of your world and one giant continent (think pangaea), then split it up as the plates move to create new continents. Where the tectonic plates meet there will be trenches or mountains depending on which direction the plates move (where they move away from each other the trenches appears, where they meet and collide the mountains will form). That's pretty much how I made my previous map and I loved the process even if it took quite a lot more time - but it made me feel like I knew my world better and that it actually had formed in a similar way to our own.

For this one I did it a tad simpler, since I knew I wanted one huge landmass. So I made a rough sketch of how large and what shape I was going for and where the larger lakes and rivers would be. And just as the previous one I made tectonic plates to figure out where to put the mountains and trenches.

[Loelya]

this is an AWESOME map I love it!