Map Advice?

Map Advice?

uploaded by Mixirica Aug 12, 2026

Description

Hi everyone! I'm somewhat new to Inkarnate (I have been using it for just over a month now) and I think I've gotten a decent feel for the basic tools and techniques but really want to step my worldbuilding up a notch. The first map pictured is the world map, and the rest of the maps are towns/cities within the world (they're from newest to oldest). Also, quick disclosure, **the final two maps are not mine!** The first is a battlemap reference of what I thought was a really cool map, and the second is a really cool regional map. You can find the original creators' maps here, respectively: [https://inkarnate.com/m/voQm3L](https://inkarnate.com/m/voQm3L) [https://inkarnate.com/m/dwjVXM](https://inkarnate.com/m/dwjVXM)

For the world map, I feel like I'm struggling pretty bad with farms and scaling. I feel like some of the structures of the world are much bigger than others, and I think that my farms could also use some work, but I'm not sure how to carry this out.

For the cities, I feel like my biggest weakness is the size of my cities. Take the Richland map as an example: there's a lot of cool ideas in some of the areas (Garden of Champions, Unbroken Three, Colosseum area, etc.) but because of the size of the city they can't appear as detailed. For this, should I focus on making smaller, more detailed maps of cities, make smaller maps of these specific areas, or perhaps something else? Additionally, I'd like to get more into layering objects on top of others to make more aesthetically epic structures like in the map with the titan skull but am struggling to get started. Looking at the map it looks like they might flatten the skull into a terrain level and then maybe blend an additional layer on top? Final noticeable thing is height perception: I think I did this pretty well on a large-scale world map, but I think I am alarmingly bad at it on my regional maps (specifically the Pariso map, it just looks awkward to me). How can I design cities and landscapes to appear taller than other parts of the map?

That's everything that's on my mind about these maps, and if anyone has any additional advice that I didn't touch on it would be very much appreciated.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that the first map is not a finalization, it's a work-in-progress that felt off, so I came here for help.

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