Hey
A little about myself
I'm Ady, i've been writing a novel and i'm trying to draw an atlas for the world in my novel. So, after looking into the tutorials on here i decided to become a Cartographer and try my hand at drawing it.
I'm 23 years old, from snowy England. What is the rule of thumb when it comes to drawing a world. The quandry for me is my world in my head is 5x the size of Earth.
Software I Have
GIMP
InkScape
Style of Map I'm aiming for
my novel is about pirates but so far I have tried my best to not have cliches in my book. Since is harder then it seems.
If anyone can help me draw a large scale map then i'll be grateful
Ady
Welcome, ady. There are loads of tutorials around here to get you started mapping your world. You might start with something by RobA, the Gimp guru.
Be sure post a work-in-progress in the appropriate forum to show us how you're coming along. Good luck!
-IG
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Daniel the Neon Knight: Campaign Cartographer User
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Welcome, Ady --
As far as your setting, can I make the over-generalization that pirates are parasites, hence you'll need one or more large "hosts" for them to prey upon? Too, the technology and culture of pirates seem to be derivative - combinations of the "best" of the "prey species"... best from the pirates' viewpoint at least :-). So do you figure you have to at least mentally sketch the whole of the world, before you can set your pirates within it? From my view that would get you a more coherent result than if you imagined the pirates first, then tried to imagine how they got that way. How much detail is already set? Do you have some action and cultures and backstory that you want to "drape" across a map?
There are tools that will generate whole worlds at once for you - at least to the 80% point, after which you can tweak to improve realism or accentuate features you need. One such is Fractal Terrains. The worlds it makes are pretty, but kind of uniform, if one can say that about something fractal. That's to say you can set it to make the whole globe very mountainous, or somewhat smooth, mostly big landmasses or mostly small ones. It doesn't do mixtures well, but you can edit in some plains, add some island chains, and so forth. If you want the freedom to say there'll be a precipitous coast just *there*, and barren steppes over *yonder*, there're ample tutorials here to help you do just that. The distinction is a generated world is a thing you can look at from all angles, mess with the projection, the colors, ocean levels, and whatnot. A world you build from scratch as a map could be more satisfyingly Just So, but you would have to do the manipulations yourself.
You can tell FT the world circumference is 125,000 miles instead of 25,000, if you like. Or whatever scale factor you mean by "5x Earth's size".
I do most of my mapping using an FT world as raw material, then I add whatever detail I need.
Do you have a period equivalence in mind, or a style of map you want to achieve?
--jbg
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