Continents and Island Framing shorelines

[Creativetides]

I’m drawing a world map, with separate continents and subcontinents. My only question is How do I frame the maps and draw the shorelines so it feels huge, so I’m looking at a world with continents instead of an archipelago with islands.

[Kellerica]

In my opinion, the scale often comes as combination of both the things within the shoreline and the shoreline itself. A large landmass with tons of small mountains feels bigger in scale than one with a couple of medium sized ranges, and so on.

I'd look at maps of the real world on a global scale for inspiration. If you want to do a whole world map, it could maybe be a good idea to emulate a the certain kind of distortion you see on some map projections? Not really an expert on this particular area, but it's just a thought.

For my two cents on the shoreline, to me one of the key things of making the scale feel larger is the implemention of tiny little islands. If you have large continents, you'll want to have small islands around them here an there, hugging the shoreline rather closely. If there is a large archipelago, don't just draw ten large islands and leave it there, but fill the gaps and and the edges with lots of little ones.

Behold the extremely crude and ugly example I whipped up (I don't have my Cintiq at the office and I'm dreadful with a regular pencil these days, but bear with me). To me, getting a shoreline to go from point A to point B immediately makes me think of larger scale.


Obviously this is just my personal view, I'm more of an artist than an geography expert, so take it with a grain of salt. But a little something to think about, at least.

[KMAlexander]

I agree with everything Kell said. But I'd like to add that the level of detail is a balance. A shoreline looks smoother zoomed out rather than when you're closer in and seeing every inlet and beach.

Likewise, I think focusing on the continent-scale also means you're dealing with fewer specifics details and more biome related. So you'll have a "coastal biome" and "mountain range" and major rivers vs. labeling every individual swamp, forest, creeks, streams, hill country.

[Yrda]

I'm anything but a map expert, but what helped me most with the "feeled" scaling of my map was adjusting the size of the text labels on it. A big font size made the map look small, a tiny font size made it feel larger.
But of course this only works if you want to label your map at all.

[Kellerica]

Likewise, I think focusing on the continent-scale also means you're dealing with fewer specifics details and more biome related. So you'll have a "coastal biome" and "mountain range" and major rivers vs. labeling every individual swamp, forest, creeks, streams, hill country.

An excellent point. This often comes down to technical restrictions too, when working digitally - if you create an enormous map and try to include every single detail like this, and label them too, you'll end up with a monstrosity of a file that will most likely make your computer have an existential crisis and fall down a sobbing mess at your feet. And of course you'd be running into difficulties with traditional media too - where to find paper big enough, etc.

I think this is something that a lot of people attempt and it rarely ends well. Some people do manage to pull it off, mind you, so I'm not saying it's impossible. I'd prefer to make a less detailed map of the entire world, and then create more detailed regional maps later on. But this is of course just my two cents - I personally don't have the stamina to work on a single enormous map for as long as it would take to make one. I prefer to wrap a piece up in a timely fashion and move onto the next one.

Sorry, seems this got a little bit off-topic, but hopefully not by too much.

[KMAlexander]

Historically it's always interesting to look at what cartographers focused on, take this 1600 map from Matthias Quad he tends to focus on landmass and rivers—where this 1700 map from Nicolas der Fer is very ocean focused, and then you have something like Pierre-Jean Mariette's 1646 map of the Americas which sketches out mountain ranges (incorrectly) and hits on some inlets/rivers and a few settlements.

[KMAlexander]

I always tend to focus on the 16th > 19th century when researching fantasy cartography styles and approaches. It tends to be the sweet spot for using pictograms for topographical features, which tend to be what fantasy fans like/expect in their maps. That three hundred year period falls right before things began to shift away from that style in the 20th century and toward more technical representation. i.e. hachure, then later topographic, etc.