Revamping biomes, mountains and forests

Since introducing biomes, I wasn't satisfied with the way I drawn them as it was simply a new layer that were making rounds around all mountains and hills. It was logical at the time as it was a last minute addition but I was sure I could do better.

Instead of superposing a new layer on top of the paper map background, I added directly to this background around 15 gradients forming all the necessary biomes. This way, the biomes are more blended with the rest of the map.

On top of that, I also revamped the mountains and hills. Both are now colored and a new snowy mountain style has also been added.

Without any additional changes, this assets update brings a new problematic: a lot of void that was previously hidden as the area around all mountains was in the same color as the mountains is now visible.

The best way to fix this was to increase mountain density a lot. I'm quite satisfied with the result:

After these biomes and mountains changes, there was a last thing that was bothering me: the forests. These big patches of green were a bit too "flat" and simplistic next to the previously added tree variations.

I decided to add a new layer of trees on top of the previous one (that is now simply a colored layer adding a sense of "deep forest") with the same tree assets used in the non-canon version of the map. This way, the forests are more detailed and more consistent with the rest of the map.

All of these actions have took way more time than I expected but I think it was worth it as it seems to me (and also for my visitors I hope) that the map is now more enjoyable to look at and explore.

I didn't think that adding almost 40 000 new trees in my Figma file could make it so slow.

Next to all of that, some new points of interest have been added, especially in the non-canon version of the map. I covered Gondor (far west and south), Harondor, khand and some others.

I hole exploring these new areas will be enjoyable for everyone!