Quote Originally Posted by jfrazierjr View Post
For me, the water "texture" just messes this up in my brain. It's just hard for me to concentrate on the features because the ocean texture is so dominant. The actual landmass content is very nice though...

If you want to try the polar thing, my suggestion would be the drop the two center (top and bottom) decorations and put the insets there, likely overlapping the actual "map" a bit would probably work best. Personally, I prefer the one with the paper texture as it gives it more character.
I'll work on the water.

the problem is, from the mathematical point of view, how to get from the two hemispheres the correct polar regions (actually I think only the northern part would be important).