Hello Cartographers.

Brand new here but long time lurker here and around other map making haunts. Primarily, I am a writer and world builder. However, I have always wanted to create a map for one of the worlds I am working on. So, here we are finally giving it a go and dang is it tough! Probably wouldn't be having so many issues if the world I want to portray wasn't so,.. strange? exotic? alien? I think a lot of the mistakes I have been perceiving myself making are genuinely basic/common map making mistakes. Stuff like poor attempts at perspective and a terrible eye for scale. Certainly there are also plenty of mistakes due to the world being garish and weird by design as well. A fact that puts accomplishing what I want that much farther beyond my artistic talents as well.

My hope in posting here is twofold.

  • One, I am hoping for general advice, constructive criticism and encouragement from the community. Clearly you all are the experts and echo chamber I need to immerse myself in to improve.
  • Second, I am hoping to gauge the viability of commissioning the final product. My talent is in writing, not visual arts. Producing the results I want are beyond me at the moment. Eventually this project might evolve into the setting of a TTRPG or a novel - that is the ambitious hope anyway. That said, I imagine the statement 'this project might evolve into...' could be considered a red flag here for commission artists so I want to be clear: I'd be absolutely looking to pay for your professional services as what they are, a professional service. None of that 'I'll pay you in royalties when I hit it big!!! bull****. Maybe that goes without saying, I've just heard some horror stories in other Art communities.
    I do have some questions regarding the commission process, I imagine it varies from artist to artist, but I want to get a feel for what most need from a client to get a project properly defined.


For now I want to focus on that first hope, advice. I figure describing what I am trying to accomplish and what I have so far is a good start.

The basics of what I am trying to do

A world map depicting the world's one known continent.
The 'continent' is a series of high elevation land-forms encircling a large crater.
This continent is probably ~the size of Australia, though I when it comes to scale at this point.
This world has no traditional oceans. Instead it has, for lack of a better word, a cloud-ocean. An incredibly dense, low lying cloud-cover blanketing the world.
Only land above a certain elevation pokes up out of the clouds. Mountains or the upheaval caused by the impact that made the crater.
The world is firmly set in the extremely broad genre of Science-Fantasy, combining aspects both Fantasy and Science Fiction.

What Ive done so far
I looked around at various images of craters settling on Manicouagan Reservoir as my inspiration. On Wikipedia there is an extremely high resolution image of the crater. This was probably my first mistake. I spent ages carving land-masses out of an image that was, frankly, way way way too big! Once I had that done I converted what I spent way too long doing into vectors to safely downsize them to a more manageable size. I ended up with this:

Click image for larger version.  Name: World Map resize.png  Views: 3  Size: 562.6 KB  ID: 137233

I then decided that was way too big and way too square. Almost everyone in this world is going to live around the interior of the crater. Things get a great deal more dangerous and difficult to traverse the further inland one goes. So, I cropped it down to this:

Click image for larger version.  Name: World Map resizecrop.png  Views: 2  Size: 432.6 KB  ID: 137234

After that, I faced a crisis of map style and theme, a crisis I've still not reconciled. Found so very many maps from this community I admire and am envious of. As this is a Science Fantasy world I debated between doing a more modern style elevation map or creating what appeared to be a hand painted, or hand drawn map. I think I am leaning heavily towards the latter, I find that style of map more evocative in general but I've still not made a solid decision regarding style.

Rather than keep spinning my wheels with decision paralysis I started painting. Maybe something good would come of it! Added some clouds first to establish early that what surrounds the landmasses is not water but rather cloud and gas. Painted in some cliffs, which I actually really like but this is where I started to doubt my grasp of perspective and scale.

Click image for larger version.  Name: World Map painted1.png  Views: 8  Size: 8.13 MB  ID: 137235

Lastly, and this is where I am at now and what has prompted this post, I have tried to get started on zoning areas for mountain-ranges, jungles, deserts, etc. I am almost embarrassed to post this last one cause it is a mess. I like some of what I experimented with but, enh.... So many times I started and erased what I put down. Cycled through loads of mountain range brushes (goodness do I wish I could hand draw these things) Just a lot of trial and error. Attempting and then erasing.

Click image for larger version.  Name: World Map painted11.png  Views: 18  Size: 8.40 MB  ID: 137236

So yeah. That is where I am at. Long rambling post, I know. Sure hope I posted it in the right place. Any and all advice is welcome! More than that, begged for. Comments, criticisms and questions as well. I am in the dark here and I think my trial and error has dragged this map kicking and screaming as far as I can take it by myself. Time to talk to the awesome map nerds!

Cheers and thanks.