Hello again. First of all I wanted to thank you all again for the great tips an suggestions. I've mostly been working on the details of my world recently, and while writing down some historical and cultural details I realized that I wasn't really happy with my map. My main problem is that I've got a whole lot of very different cultures very close to each other. The further I delved into the history of these nations/cultures the more I found myself making up excuses and finding solutions to explain the present state of the world. Meaning I realized that many of these differences would've more or less disappeared in time given the proximity of the various countries. And on the other hand I found that some things just didn't work out climatologically/geologically (Yeah, thanks to my sister who studies that stuff at university... ) So after I did some thinking I decided to redo the map on a greater scale and spread all the ideas I have on more land (more continents, actually) , as well as increasing the distance inbetween those land masses.
What I wanted to ask was whether anybody had any great idea as to how I should design this world. In the past I tried to draw the coastlines by hand and then scanning/importing it into photoshop. Problem is, I usually end up with highly unrealistic coasts and geologically impossible land masses. And yes, that's quite important to me, I'm trying to create a world as realistic as possible, so this would not do. Does anybody know whether there are any programs, tools that could help me with that, or else if there are any hand drawing techniques that could help me create more realistic land shapes.
I'll try and do some experimenting, but if anybody got an idea I'd appreciate the input.
Thanks in advance!
Cheers
Tairon