Purely Fictional Planet, Critique Encouraged

[CarnivorousJellybean]

Thanks, Chick, you're probably right.

Now I'm curious what your maps look like! I'll go take a look when I have a stable internet connection (on cell data right now and on train)

[Barek333]

No need for panic. As I said you can do whatever you want with your map and it shows promise even though as some said there is a bit of difference in the focus between the stretched and not streched parts but all in looks nice.

I was just puzzled about the Europa/Greece thing and now you explained..there was nothing negative behind my comment, just genuine curiosity

Cheers,
Barek

[CarnivorousJellybean]

Sort of maybe an update? I haven't done much, but I've refined what I want to ask you super smart people and I also wanted to show one of the earliest stages of this map.

To be a little clearer, my plans are to make this in to a full-on map, maybe several maps, for climate, biomes, major settlements, maybe a map of the world's history, and then go have more fun living in it while I daydream with stuff like paintings of the dragons and crazy landscapes while my mapping buddy works on how the cities and civilizations work. I'm already crazy in-depth with the creatures that live here, too. Not joking, a seven-page document covering not much more than the carnivores.

Early Stage:

The continents, except the unnamed middle one and polar isles at the bottom, were all drawn in a tiny little sketchbook while I was on a plane based on a long email sent to me by my partner in crime. Started with the islands above the Eastern continent (Eira), then that continent as a whole, then two more pages, one for each of the other named continents. After that, I did a rough layout of where I wanted the three of them to go, scanned all the pictures into photoshop, scaled them, and traced them to make the landmasses you see in the picture above (with the polar isles and unnamed continent painted in after I'd finished the main layout).

Current Stage:

This is where the whole thing's at now. I ended up deleting all the tectonic plates with the intent to re-do them once I understand how they work a little better. I saw a thread where Groovey and Pixie were going into insane amounts of detail, so I'll probably do a lot of reading that... once I finish midterms (oh the life of a university student).

So the questions for any kind observer willing to help me out:

• How's the over-all layout of the continents? I know the islands are uncannily similar to Earth's - because at least half of them basically ARE Earth's islands stretched or warped or just plain old copy-pasted - but I mean the overall layout. For example, Eira and the unnamed continent remind me heavily of Asia/Africa just because of their layout. The general position of continents, too, seems a lot like Earth's with Aainmhar where North America is, Eira over Russia/Asia, Alba Crunar over Greenland, and the unnamed one right on top of Africa. I tried messing around with the layout more, but I can't find anything that still feels PRACTICAL and keeps them in the positions relative to each other that I want. It'd be weird to have a map where one of the continents was cut in half over the West/East sides of the map, wouldn't it?
  
• Are tectonic plates really that important? I know I want a steep, younger mountain range along the west coast of Aainmhar, Alba Crunar should have a landscape similar to Iceland, and the middle-south patchy part of the unnamed continent is, ideally, the same kind of lake-spotted landscape as the Hudson Lowlands in Canada but warmer. Example pictures [1] [2] [3] [4]
  
• The world's going to probably need a higher concentration of oxygen since I have giant fire-breathing dinosaurs running about. Any recommendations of what I should read up on for the side-effects that'll have on climate? All I've found so far is a VSauce video depicting a world where bugs are horrifyingly big.

I know I keep saying thank you, but seriously, thank you for all the help and feedback so far. I'd still be stuck on that poorly-made "Early Stage" map if I hadn't started browsing the forums and posting here.

Take care guys,

Em

[Korash]

Howdy CJB, glad you got that registration problem solved and Welcome To the Guild, The Mappiest place on the web.

Now back to subject at hand...
I like the layout that you have and am iterested in where you take this. As for the number of rivers, at this scale (global) there are VERY few rivers that can be seen on a satellite image of earth. You are more likely to see the mouths of large ones, and maybe the effects on the land, but not the rivers themselves. The rivers you see on maps and globes at similar scales are just lines to indicate the location, not an indication of width, of the river. And YES, I agree that you should figure out the mountains and other land features before placing the rivers. Then place vegetation...

Tectonics is handy, but unless you need things to be just right, I don't think they are a requirement. Some people want their world to fit with reality and such, others not so much. They are definitely NOT required to make a great map. There are many great examples in the Finished Maps section that never looked at tectonics, just like there many that have. Just choose your poison Understanding tectonics can help you understand where to better put your ranges and your weather patterns, but you don't need to be a slave to them.

[Robulous]

Just a point - the central continent has a coastline that's a bit "crunchy" for an equatorial environment. I understand that you copied it from Scandinavia (that's also in Europe ), but the fjord coastline is implausible for a hot environment where there's likely lots of rainful and rivers depositing sediment to fill in those gaps. That wet central area looks ripe for swamps, you might want to look at maps of swampy areas and deposition landforms.

[CarnivorousJellybean]

Thanks for the welcome and the advice, Korash! Maybe I'll dabble in tectonics for my next map once I have some of the more basic stuff down c:

Just a point - the central continent has a coastline that's a bit "crunchy" for an equatorial environment. I understand that you copied it from Scandinavia (that's also in Europe ), but the fjord coastline is implausible for a hot environment where there's likely lots of rainful and rivers depositing sediment to fill in those gaps. That wet central area looks ripe for swamps, you might want to look at maps of swampy areas and deposition landforms.

Oh gosh you have a point with the coast; I hadn't even thought of that! Though I did realize Scandinavia was part of Europe about halfway through writing one of the longer posts on the last page maybe I'll move that coastline to one of the other continents on the northern part... I'm a bit attached to it!

[johnvanvliet]

my first impression is

the coastlines are a bit OVERLY fractal cut using the Julia set
-- it really dose look like Julia was used

as to other things mentioned
-- well it dose look like "grease" was used a few times

[CarnivorousJellybean]

Thanks, I could probably smooth the coastline out in quite a few places. I'll zoom in on it and try editing it at 100% size since so far the editing's been done at 25 - 33%. I used this tutorial for the coastline. Julia set has to do with fractals right?

In regards to these "other things", while I understand ignorance is NEVER a good excuse, I was raised by wolves in a part of the world where maps don't exist. Here:

Note: This map doesn't imply that I wouldn't recognize any of these as countries, just that I would (or wouldn't) recognize them as a part of Europe.
Also, this is the last time I'll acknowledge all the mess on the last page. Nothing left to resolve or point out. Yes, Greece, Croatia, Sweden, Norway, and Finland ARE part of Europe; yes I did use parts of their coastlines either directly or as inspiration for parts of my coastline; no, I was not aware that the coastline I was copying was "Europe" when making that comment that I hadn't used Europe in my coastline (see above picture as reference); yes I do have a giant map of the world on my wall now with the intent to study it closer. I'm an engineering student and piano teacher, not a politician or geographer or actual cartographer, dammit :p

OKAY ON TO THE GOOD STUFF... by that I mean on to the map update:
So, Robulous, I'm really attached to this coastline, so I'm going to try to make it work - and fail miserably - and also make a second version where the crunchy part of the middle continent is instead a part of the Eastern continent's Northern coastline. Jonvanvliet, I just saw your post so I haven't applied/attempted to apply any of your suggestions yet. Next update

Ocean currents, used Azelor's tutorial. I think I did it right? The loops are closed at least!

Atmospheric pressure and resulting winds in January, also followed Azelor's tutorial... I'm a little more confused about this one though. Are the loops closed? Where even are the loops!? Did I do too many spots for the pressures? Argh!

Same as above but July

Sea floor topography [WIP]. I imagine this is where knowing what the tectonics look like would have helped. I kind of followed what Earth has going on and hoped for the best. Does the change in shade need to be more gradual? The land's going to be done in 1000 metre intervals instead of 2000. I'm intending to throw a gradient map over the grayscale one when I'm done. Eugh this is craziness. Good craziness, but still craziness.


BY THE WAY, is it acceptable to have two WIP's going on at once? Since I'm waiting on my mapping buddy to be not busy before I move on to finalizing anything, I was thinking of making some mini maps to practice stuff like cities and islands.

[Durakken]

It's ok. I don't recognize them as Europe either because "Europe" and "Asia" aren't continents by just about any definition but whatevers ^.^
It looks to me like an honest mistake similar to how people talk of America as the US only, ignoring Canada, Mexico, and all of South America... People do the same with Eastern and Western Europe. When they say Europe usually only mean Western Europe... however Greece is generally consider Western Europe considering it is one of the largest foundations of Western Culture...

I see no problem with using coast lines of the real world, but there in lies the rub, many professionals add imperfections as a way of copyrighting their work (the only way to actually copyright an Earth map). Also there is the problem that it is rather noticable to plenty of people so if you can it is advisable not to do it. Instead, there are other ways of generating coast lines to use such as the "difference cloud render > Curves > Copy&paste onto map" method. Anyways, if you're happy with what you have I don't see reason to not keep it and continue on.

[CarnivorousJellybean]

See, it's not that I don't associate Greece with Europe, just that I don't recognize its coastline.

I hadn't realized there was a cloud render method for it though! Might have to give that a try c: