Map making advice.

First off, I'm using images purchased on the marketplace, so it should qualify as on topic. Now in short this is the map of the courtyard belonging to a vampire muse in the feywild. The two rooms there (Snowy castle marketplace asset) lead down to a localized sub-basement with a Banshae hoard and spawning room. The party bashing down the gates(Stone Walls marketplace asset) and attacks and are met by mixed forces of Banshae and the ghosts oft he past lovers of the vampire muse.(Still not sure what kind of ghost would best represent that. :/) Now its a vampire muse so I figured its court yard would be lousy with sculptures and pretty plants so I randomly put down plants and sculptures from various item sets. (Wrights snowy fields, Trees and plants, Mega maps winter snow and others). But eh, the plants and sculptures look really bad randomly placed like that. But I draw a complete blank on how to actually put these down i a way that looks nice. Anyone have any ideas like a formulaic set of steps to take when making a map that could help with that problem?

Did you say there is already a snowy field on that? Maybe consider building on top of a snow-field map background that has a little more land-features showing. A snowy field with a bit of gradient, hills or rock outcropping, could help give you a feeling of topography, bumps in the land, that can help you place the plants and objects in clusters, groupings, curved lines. It's hard to tell for sure on the screen cap, but looks like the snowfield background is close to plain white. As you've already found there are many snow and winter options on the Roll20 Marketplace and in the art search! Another idea is add a few snowy trees or leafless trees that could be larger objects on the map, branches kind of overlapping some of the scattered plants and such. Also perhaps resize some of the elements you have there into various sizes (such as a larger version of some of the plants).Your map is off to a good start and certainly be used for playing, representationally, as it is.

I think partly it's because the area looks very barren, just a field of statues that don't seem to be placed to depict any shape or pathway through the courtyard. Take a look at a model of a castle courtyard: <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8" rel="nofollow">https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8</a>... See how the courtyard has a design to it rather than just as a random collection of nice objects? I'd recommend trying to depict that sense of space and direction with your objects. &nbsp; The other thing I'd suggest is to try and get things that match one another rather than a random assortment. &nbsp;A sense of similarity would really tie things together. Would love to see your updated map once you've had a chance to go back and change it!

I redid it trying to use all the advice I was given. I replaced the snow with the snowy tundra from endless terrain. Tried adding some sort of decorative patterns to the araa with the plants, added the cobblestone road from wright's snowy fields, and I made it so a lot of the flowers were congrous.

Wow, congrats, that is a great improvement. The paths and hedges and larger features seem to help, as well as the tundra, and plants. Kind of has a Zelda-like layout. Who wouldn't want to adventure and explore there?

Thanks,I'm really glad I asked for advice, I feel a lot better with this map than the other one.

Looking good, but to be honest I liked the first map. ;) My only suggestion is that you settle on one perspective instead of mixing them. Right now the trees and houses are topdown while the statues are isometric.&nbsp;

Nice! &nbsp;Personally I like that one much more, thanks for sharing it Devlin :)

@Peter Maybe, but I'm not sure how to do that. When I need an item for my maps I search for the item and just take and use whats available. Sometimes the offerings are very limited.