Eleven years and Counting...
Once upon a time, a young man of 16 drew a map to accompany a fantasy story he wrote for extra credit in his English class. He wrote about the continent he had drawn on a web-page before HTML5 was a gleam in anybody's eyes, when HTML4 was just on the rise... And then, after leaving high school, he expanded on that map. For half a year he spent time sketching across nine pages of home-made grid paper, light, flexible marks, until he felt satisfied with the shapes. Then he traced those outlines with his best pen, and made an early scanned copy of the map. For a long time, he felt his map was finished, but always there were niggling desires to return to it -- to color it, to add political boundaries, to properly make the world more than mere flat distinctions between land and water, and to find rivers and lakes inside the landmasses.
Then, in 2009, after ten years since his original continent, he decided to work on the world map again. First, he decided to make a colored map, and unfolding the nine pages he colored it in, until he grew weary of pencils, and this resulted in the grand map of Atrusius in color as seen below. Still, he felt dissatisfied with his super-continent mass in the east, and so set out to attempt a new map of the surface, with more dedication to making a good, solid world for his fantasy environment. But this plan fizzled out, as he had poor actual understanding of the necessary atributes to fix what he felt was wrong with the continental plates. That is why he has come here.
Below are a set of concept maps on which I would like feedback and advice. I have in no case presented here attempted to work within a particular map projection, which results in rather significant scale problems, but I plan to use some easy to work with projection as I work on the map going forward. Mostly what I'm looking for right now is continental meshing -- do the continents on the world maps below feel like they belong together and are they arranged in some logical manner for how they might fit together?
My next stage is to properly research plate tectonics enough to make a proper plate & motion map over one of these concepts, or potentially a brand new one. Currently I am committed to the rough shapes of only two of the continents at present, the central island continent and the western continent shaped a bit like a crescent. The rest are fairly flexible except for a few particular shapes I'd like to keep in the map.
Thank you in advance to anybody who reads and comments on this.
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