Welcome to the Guild! That sounds like a fascinating project!
Hi, I'm Geoffrey,
It's great finding out about the Cartographers' Guild!
I've been drawing maps since I was six. My father and elder brother taught me the ropes and in the process we made a couple of simple fictional worlds early on.
I went on doing that and started collecting atlasses, globes and maps.
Just before I went to college, I found out Easter Island, the pyramids and Angkor What are all pretty much in one orbit around the globe. Eventhough I now know that means diddly squat, it got me going on a neverending project that has grown into somewhat of an obsession. By tilting the Earth 30°, I got those three points somewhat on the equator. It also drastically altered the entire geography of the planet. So, looking at a globe at that angle, I started wondering how it would dictate the climate, weather and finally the biosphere.
The Tilted Earth gave me another great idea. By using the complex and diverse geography of an existing world 40000 km in circumference, I could make a fictional world of a size, depth and complexity unmatched in fantasy story writing or rpg. The real world is really really really ginormous and harbours such great diversity in environments, lifeforms and cultures. Once you get into it, it starts to become apparent how small and uniform most fantasy worlds really are. Not to mention the typical single-biotope worlds of science fiction
So yeah, I basically just gave a little twist to an existing world. But then my perfectionism kicked in. I thought it would make sense to work on a flawless realistic climate system. Using globes, google earth and drawing maps by hand I started sketching pressure areas, ocean currents, prevailing winds, temperature and humidity gradients, some simple köppens climate maps and bogged down in this massive system of interrelated data. I've been focussing on exactly that for the past ten years really.
It isn't even really about finishing this world anymore. In the process I've learned so much about physical geography, at one point even joing a course in physical geography at the university. I find looking at maps, globes and the Tilted Earth soothing, like meditation. But it's also pretty distracting. Whenever I get fed up with college or work and don't feel like visiting friends, I can emerse myself again in this world in an ultimately very improductive act of escapism. Sometimes it will keep me hostage for several days.
Just yesterday I was once again scouring the internet in search of a good step by step plan to construct a climate system, when I came across the Cartographers' Guild. I think I've seen it before, but I don't know why I never signed in before. Eventhough I couldn't immediately find a climate builder, I did find Joshua's Usable Mollweide Projection Grid. This allows me to finally make a good map in TheGimp from the grid I had allready made on GoogleEarth and use layers to construct a better atlas. I've worked on it till 6 o'clock this morning, but it's only half finished. I'll post the result as soon as it's done.
It's great to finally find fellow enthousiasts for this quite obscure hobby. I've never met anyone else who is into maps, cartography and geofiction for it's own sake.
I'll post what I can. Maybe make some scans of my old hand drawn maps too.
Welcome to the Guild! That sounds like a fascinating project!
Gidde's just zis girl, you know?
My finished maps | My deviantART gallery
My tutorials: Textured forests in GIMP, Hand-Drawn Mapping for the Artistically Challenged
Geofiction! You sound like my kind of nerd.I'd love to see your project, that sounds really engrossing. And welcome!
Welcome to the guild Depporoni! As has already been said, that sounds like quite a project you've undertaken. I would be very interested to see your map for this. Anyway, good to have you on board.
Cheers,
-Arsheesh
The best place is the Regional/World Mapping forum, in the Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) section
That looks pretty cool! Tectonically progressed?
Gidde's just zis girl, you know?
My finished maps | My deviantART gallery
My tutorials: Textured forests in GIMP, Hand-Drawn Mapping for the Artistically Challenged
Thank you!
I'll repost the map at the R/W mapping forum
It's not tectonically progressed. I could do that, but the idea I have in mind for this world will only be around a mere 100 000 years in the future. At that point plates will only have moved 15 km at best, in any way insignificant to the scale of this map. It could stll have a significant impact on mountain ranges or sea straights like Gibraltar.
I did remove the polar icecaps from Greenland and Antarctica. That way I can reengineer the new icecaps and figure out how the plates around the new poles will sink or rebound.
Eventually the rise or fall of the sea levels, erosion and deposition of grounds by the new climates and so forth will change the landscape more than the tectonics. At least those are my expectations. For now I'm just following everything I've learned about physical geography thusfar, so there may yet be some surprises ahead.
My estimates up till now predict that this geography will favor an ice age, a drastical drop in sea levels and massive deserts too. I hope I can tweak it well enough to allow enough survivors to spawn new human species, while challenging the survivors enough to evolve away from modern humans, all the while keeping enough other species alive to reconstruct an interesting wild life. In any case it will involve a mass extinction event.
Of course, I can still always make use of the fantastic magical radioactivity trope and swap some realism for epic wowness. But for now I've got my hands full on this simulated nature. Any help or original ideas are very welcome by the way![]()