February/March Lite Challenge Entry: The World of Htrea

So I've finally came up with a concept and will be my first attempt at a world or planet sized map. Concept is doing the invert of current planet Earth where all the oceans are now land masses and the lands are seas. Additional all oceanic trenches will become mountain ranges and vice versa. This would be a very hot climate based world, hence the equator and tropics primarily desert wasteland and the arctic zones being temperate. Time frame I am looking at heavily based colonial (North/South extremes) and nomadic civilizations (Center). Unsure if I'm over stepping my skill level but we shall see what I can pull off. Hope you enjoy the trip.

Edit: Here's the screenshot I gathered from Open Streetmap.

Here's my base map I will be working with after editing out the labels. Wish me luck!!

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Yay for our first entry! Knock em dead, geamon :)

I've been working on a base texture and colors. Because this map is untraditional in the water-land ratio or my eyes are used to looking at our planet in its normal form my eyes always make the seas stand out over the land. Any suggestions on how to solve this or any color corrections?

Edit: Had issues uploading.

I think it may be just because the land's white. Try coloring it green, even if it's just temporary; that should put the land over the sea where it belongs.

Edit: Aha! Now I see your colors. Looks a little dark, but that's just style. I think once you have some mountains done that might do the trick. I never really feel the land until I give it some bones.

Great concpet :)
I think that land features will help, and I'd probably lighten the sea a little so it doesn't "fight" with the land for attention, especially since all of us are used to seing those shapes as land. :)

After working with it for a while this is really starting to shape up. Solved all my issues and now am gonna work on mountain ranges. Not sure if I'm gonna add rivers due to scale.

### Latest WIP ###

Looking good man

What style of mountains work best with a satellite/atlas style like I've got so far, height map using bump maps etc or artistic hand drawn? Struggling on deciding whats best.

I hate to say it 'cuz it's non-committal but...what works best is whatever you make work. For me, I wouldn't use hand-drawn or iso or whatever because of the texture and colors being so dominant. If you turned those way down so that they are just faint colors (more like a grungy paper) then you could use hand-drawn. As is, I'd use a shaded relief which is something less than a real height map...think of Pasis style mtns as opposed to me style mtns.