WIP-- Anguem-- From Tectonic Plates Up (hopefully, first map here)

[rvgriffiths]

Hi all,

I'm descending upon your lovely forum, where I've only lurked in the past, to try and build a map for my WIP novel. I'm calling this world Anguem, from the latin for snake, as serpent-like creatures feature heavily in the story.

I know that I need a cold-ish, cut-off area, and a place where an empire could flourish, but beyond that I'm going where the rules of physics take me as much as possible, starting with the amazing tutorials on these forums, like this one.

This should be a fun ride as the only technology I have access to at the moment is a touch tablet. We'll see how this goes...

[seredemia]

That sounds great! Can't wait to see what you come up with then

[rvgriffiths]

So first step, I scribbled out some "tectonic plates" and chose their directions of movement:

Attachment 61746

Then I tried to figure out the kind of plate interactions (blue for divergent, orange for convergent, green for transform, and giant yellow loops standing in for this expression: )



Tomorrow's my day off, so I'm hoping to get my continents roughed out and maybe some mountains laid down as well.

[Raptori]

Makes sense to start with tectonic plates - for my world I added them after the continents, wish I'd done them first!

Looks like you've made a good start

[rvgriffiths]

All right, took a stab at continents. I really don't like what I have so far. I think I need to rework it drastically. It feels small and random, and I want the world to feel large, expansive, and real.

I'm considering flipping the pole continent to the top, and I'm wondering if I need something in the Plate 5 area to provide some balance, but I don't know. I'll have to see what's where when I revamp, I guess.

[Raptori]

If you want to project it on to a globe later on it might be worth changing the aspect ratio at this point - stuff like G.Projector and Google Earth work with the map scaled to a 2:1 ratio. That might help make it easier to balance the continents too, since I think the main problem at the moment is that the map feels a bit cramped - adding more space could help with that.

[rvgriffiths]

stuff like G.Projector and Google Earth work with the map scaled to a 2:1 ratio. That might help make it easier to balance the continents too

Is that something I could do/use on an ipad? I'm using a sketching program to work on it right now. Hopefully I can get my laptop limping along enough to run GIMP soon.

2:1... Am I right in guessing that's width to height? 2 pixels/inches/whatever in width for every one in height? (That's probably something that should be basic knowledge, I'm sure, but I'm the sort of person to whom anything remotely useful is endlessly baffling. How I survive the world without a keeper is a wonder in itself.)

I would like to map it to a globe eventually, I'm a visual person and seeing things in a more realistic format is useful to me. I'm definitely all for it if it will help with my continent placement.

[Raptori]

Is that something I could do/use on an ipad? I'm using a sketching program to work on it right now. Hopefully I can get my laptop limping along enough to run GIMP soon.

2:1... Am I right in guessing that's width to height? 2 pixels/inches/whatever in width for every one in height? (That's probably something that should be basic knowledge, I'm sure, but I'm the sort of person to whom anything remotely useful is endlessly baffling. How I survive the world without a keeper is a wonder in itself.)

I would like to map it to a globe eventually, I'm a visual person and seeing things in a more realistic format is useful to me. I'm definitely all for it if it will help with my continent placement.

I'm not sure, but I think Google Earth is available for the iPad. I don't know whether the iPad version would allow you to add your own image overlay to it like the windows version does, but it's worth a look I think.

Yeah exactly, just an image twice as wide as it is tall at any size. I've made mine huge - 10,000px by 5,000px, but anything in that ratio fits perfectly on that kind of projection

I'm the same, and the distortion at the poles makes it really hard to judge how big things are there on a normal flat map. I made a rough guess at what I'd want the continents to look like, then put it on Google Earth since it makes it much easier to see where it's going wrong.

[seredemia]

Nice. I like the detail you're putting in so far, like the tectonic plates and stuff. Plus, am I right in saying that you've done all this on your iPad so far? I commend you; I always find it find to draw on touchscreen things.

[rvgriffiths]

Nice. I like the detail you're putting in so far, like the tectonic plates and stuff. Plus, am I right in saying that you've done all this on your iPad so far? I commend you; I always find it find to draw on touchscreen things.

Yep, so far! I'm using a stylus, which helps. I think I just played so much Draw Something that I'm used to it by now Having a bigger screen and stylus feels almost luxurious.


Status Update!

Went to work on the map on the iPad... discovered I'd accidentally merged the layers. And then I managed to delete the image entirely

I cried for a few hours and then went to clean up the spare room, locating my laptop, netbook, and the external drive with literally everything digital thing I have tucked on it. (Several people have been in and out of here, most of them being, um... "helpful," so to speak, so I had no idea where anything was for ages.)

Oh... but no laptop cord. No one has any idea where it might be. None of the other sixteen laptop cords fit (my house is like a graveyard for electronics. They all come here to die.) Tragedy strikes again. Well, I won't let mere lack of processing power stop me! Time to see if the NetBook... the notoriously slow NetBook I use only for typing and the occasional game of solitaire... will run GIMP.

*sets hat firmly on head and strides into the distance*

ETA: The answer is yes. ...very, very slowly.