impressive and solid work, you did a great job. The only thing are the continents which are spreaded a little too "draggy" on the planet and which are too similar in dimension and form in my oppinion, but this doesn´t reduce the good work and your excellent skills. Especially the political map and the satellite map are georgous.
Thank you very much Lukc! I'm glad you're enjoying it.
randigpanzrall,Originally Posted by randigpanzrall
Thank you too for the compliments! You bring up an interesting point and that is how much control should a fantasy/science fiction cartographer exercise when dealing with sometimes random forces in geology and astronomy that take millions of years to play out? I don't know whether it is my imagination, but I oftentimes would decide to move a river or even a continent and it just looked wrong. Even though the original placement seemed awkward or the opposite, too even or symmetrical...it just felt right to leave it where it was. Therefore, once they were placed, I made a rule for myself...no moving of continents or rivers. It was more true to life to me. I even wanted to include other features, but as I said, they didn't "feel" right. If you'll notice, Eben has no great lakes like we do in North America. It has no major isthmi. It has no polar land masses, although that doesn't mean there weren't any in the past. It has few large peninsulas. Earth is extremely top heavy when it comes to the distribution of land, and with Eben, after placing the continents where I felt they should be, I found that it too was slightly top heavy, but not nearly to the extent that Earth is. I had the choice of making it assymetrical, or even perfectly even, but I left it that way. That's just the way it turned out. I wouldn't feel right changing things.
To tell you the truth, it was kind of fun and challenging to deal with the shapes and placements that resulted, just like we have to do in real life. I've often looked at Earth and thought that, if it were in my power, I'd get rid of Baja California. It looks weird. I'd move Antarctica and put it to good use. Canada has way too many islands. The straight of Gibraltar almost seems contrived. As I said, there's WAY too much land in the northern hemisphere. And Europe has way too many peninsulas compared with the other continents...I think I'd get rid of Scandinavia.
But there they are.
Last edited by ManOfSteel; 10-03-2012 at 02:45 AM.
Realy nice work ManofSteel
Go on with this kind of work....
Thank you Nathalem! I will.
This is all very impressive, I'm simply blown away by the level of detail and craftsmanship you put into all this. I know you used Bryce to create the planet/moon images, but I'm curious as to what software you used for the others - notably, the political and continent/ocean maps? I'm sorry if this is already posted elsewhere, I tried to find it on this page but I'm relatively new to cartographers guild. Any help would be great! My email is franksjr@dukes.jmu.edu if anyone can assist me
Hi JR!
I'm glad you're enjoying the maps. Thanks so much for commenting. Regarding the detail of the political map....it is an ongoing project and there have been updates to it. I will post a new version of it here at a later date. And as far as the method used to make the maps...they were done with Photoshop.
Really great attention to details here. The Planet view is so informative and scientific that it really lends credibility to your overall design. The Political map is also impeccable.
Thanks Abeckman543,
The planet information was fun to research and calculate. In addition to Eben, I designed 9 other planets and recreated them all in 3D as well as an Astronomy program. None of the other planets have been mapped yet, and if I were to do maps, only 4 of the planets have solid surfaces, so that will save me a lot of time. But that's for another day.
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