WIP stereographic world map

[vorropohaiah]

Old thread, sorry, but this seems the best place to post a response to your stereographic map of Elyden. I had to write and say that of all the fictional maps I have seen, yours appeals to me most in terms of the shape and quality of the coastlines and land masses. At the large scale, the shapes of the continents have a great quality to them. They are interestingly shaped without ever being spindly or grotesque. And at the small scale, the detailed nooks and crannies of the coastlines are excellently done. There's also a lot of variety, which I like because it suggests different kinds of erosion forces at work, or other forces that have local effects on the shapes of coastlines. Recently I was reading about fractal dimensions of coastlines: it turns out that on earth, the crinkliness of most shorelines is independent of scale. So the coast of Norway, which is very crinkly (I hear it won awards :-) is similarly crinkly when viewed at different scales. And the coast of South Africa, which is much smoother, looks similar to itself at different scales. And sometimes I see fictional maps where at the large scale, the coast lines are very smooth, and it's only at the very small scale that it suddenly becomes extra crinkly. So, well done.

thanks a lot for the comments! its always nice to see someone not just giving a once-over to the map, but actually soaking it up, being rewarded with some of the little details that went into making it

about the coastlines, I was aware of the 'fractal' effect that you mentioned and try to include it in my work, keeping in mind all along what's craggy far out will be similar up close (like the engineers from the Hitchikers Guide, or the Demiurges themselves who shaped the world im mapping).

Two questions: is this stereographic map a reprojection from another view? (And if so, which was the original view, how did you reproject it, and how much touching up afterwards etc.)

yes, its a reprojection of an equirectangular version of the same work map, run through a NASA software called G. Projector to get (almost) any other projection i want. having said that the original equirctangular map is now probably a few years old and hasnt been updated to match changes made to the stereographic (unfortunately, the software doesnt work in reverse so i cant reconvert a touched up sterographic map back into equiretangular), so getting any changes (and there have been a lot, particularly in the north pole) translated to the base equirectangular map is a bit annoying.

And second, was the resemblance to our Earth subconscious or deliberate? Here are the similarities (and I think the map, and world from what I've seen, are wonderful whatever the case so don't take this as criticism):
The Inner Sea <==> Mediterranean. It has a Europe-like shape above it, and an Africa-like shape beneath it. It has a "Gibraltar" separating it from the sea of serpents (border with the Atlantic), and a "fertile crescent" at the far end (even with a literal Zion!). It has a Greece with very many little islands of the coast and it connects to a Black Sea/Dark Sea. In your world, what would be the Black Sea connects to what would be the Persian Gulf - I love that you can get all the way through. The place names: there are some that sound Greek on the north shore, and some that sound Arabic on the southern shore.

You have a "Scandinavia" protruding out from the continent in the northern hemisphere - I can see the resemblance better on the polar map. (Yours is further east than earth's.)

At the north-eastern tip of your "Asia" is a "Bering land bridge" connecting it to the large continent that would be North America (I mean the connection between the Ialcus Sea and the Sea of Akry). Your "North America" has a "Gulf of Mexico", a fattened "Florida", a "Cape Cod" further up the east coast, and up north, too far to the west, perhaps a mini-Hudson's Bay with a Ungava Bay to its east.

It's separated from your "South America", unlike ours (i.e. your Sea of Aseer is our Panama Canal!) and your South America is a completely different shape. "West Africa" comes very close to the "Gulf of Mexico" and I guess those islands could be like a "Caribbean", much too close to Africa. (Actually the largest one is even shaped quite like Cuba! It's a bit too far from "Florida" though.)

Anyway, I say all that not to be a smart-ass, but because maybe psychologically, subconsciously even, it helps to make your world feel realistic for the viewer/reader.

Cheers - Monty

yep it was concious, though largely from a worldbuilding and culture-creating point of view (and isnt as blatant as some other fantasy worlds out there - yes, warhammer, i'm looking at you! the way i see it (and i might be wrong) the old world advanced the way it did thanks to its climate and terrain - the mediterranean sea, favourable climate of continental europe and, earlier on, the fertile crescent and the nile, were all contributors to the rise of 'advanced civilisations' so i felt it necessary to create something similar, though you might notice that the farther away one moves from the inner sea, the less earth-like the map becomes. The continent of Bror (not sure it's labelled yet - its the rectangular one on the south of the eastern hemisphere) doesn't really translate to a world map and southern sammaea (south africe) is far more expansive with a much longer coastline. Iconciously made two 'gibraltar straits' - one to the west and east of the inner sea as i felt it would aid sea travel and trade, helping explain the more advanced cultures of the regions (though in the history im creating, the world is dying and the sea levels are slowly lowering - it wont be long before the Nartheli Strait is drained and travel between the inner sea and the dark sea will be halted, no doubt creating lots of problems to the world economy...

though having said that, now that im seeing it spelled out like this, it does seem more blatant than i had originally thought. also, proportionately, the Mediterranean is much larger than on earth (the world itself is a bit larger than earth as well - equatorial radius 6,028 miles), though your comment about cuba made be smile - never noticed that!

thanks a lot for the comments, and do keep in mind that this is very much alive, though still heavily WIP. - im still labelling it, when i get the chance to, though my 'perfectionism' means that every label necessitaties me creating an entry in my world encyclopaedia with at least a vague description, from a Korachani P.O.V, which also leads to adding more stuff to the encyclopaedia like culture, history, groups, flora fauna etc. so on small dot and label on the map might translate to a day's worth of research and writing. the goal is to get most of the map as heavily labelled as the area around the Inner Sea, which i have been slowly working on for close to a decade now.