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  1. #1

    Wip My WIP Continental Map

    This is my first map to work with on the computer. I got an Intuos4 for Christmas and traced over a map I drew out of graph paper. I moved the original continents around a bit and then retraced them on photoshop. (The first trace was on illustrator and the lines were a bit too straight and fine)

    Right now I have, I think, the largest continents in place and am working on designing tectonic plate layouts to determine island locations and that sort of thing to finish up the landmasses.

    This map is simply for a world building project but I hope for it to be used in my own future writing as well as a possible game.

    I haven't determined the scale of the planet yet but it will most likely be around the size of Earth, if not larger or smaller. I also plan to individually map key locations that may be involved in a book or game.

    Edit: I updated the plates draft which is the one with the colors areas. I'm wondering if those sort of plate locations would be acceptable or am I completely wrong? I haven't finished placing mountain locations on the Eastern Continent.

    At the moment this map is just pure reference for me for my writing and I do plan to edit the map eventually to make a more visually appealing map.
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Click image for larger version. 

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    Last edited by hawk767; 01-01-2012 at 04:37 AM.

  2. #2

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    It looks like a promising start. What sort of map are you looking to make with this? An artistic map, handdrawn style, atlas, or other?

  3. #3

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    Right now I'm just trying to sketch the map out and give the world a general outline as I go. Explaining locations, cultures, current points in history etc. You can see in the tectonic plate image where I had placed mountains and shaded in key locations, empires and kingdoms.

    I've got pretty much everything in a separate layer so once I finish up with this outline I'll probably follow a tutorial from the site and make it more artistic and visually appealing. I'm not sure which style I'll take just yet.

  4. #4
    Guild Journeyer octopod's Avatar
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    AWESOME. This is exciting, I love the idea of building the world map from the bottom up.

    What projection were you thinking in, roughly, when you drew the continents? Do you have the directions of plate motion and the types of plate intersection figured out yet? Is that big central ocean growing or shrinking?

  5. #5

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    Quote Originally Posted by octopod View Post
    AWESOME. This is exciting, I love the idea of building the world map from the bottom up.

    What projection were you thinking in, roughly, when you drew the continents? Do you have the directions of plate motion and the types of plate intersection figured out yet? Is that big central ocean growing or shrinking?
    At first I had just randomly drawn on the plates before I'd decided on mountain positions. With the current image I re-drew them to show where I'd like mountains to be located. I'm still doing a bit of study on plates to learn exactly how I want them. I think I'll probably add in the mountains and then alter the plates and then allow the set plates to create further alterations to the terrain.

    I'm not sure on the central ocean just yet but I should make it clearn that I don't intend on this image being wrapped into a globe as the continents aren't that close together. There is a see between the two on either side, I'll need to fix this in the image as well.

  6. #6
    Guild Expert jbgibson's Avatar
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    To get a better idea if the plates are reasonable, wrap that rectangular projection around a sphere and see if the ones around the poles still are around the same size as the others.

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