Simple Continental Outline
Here is a map of the whole world (which I mapped part of here) (with a small modification on part of the coastline):
Erda Simple Color.png
Anyone have any suggestions? I plan on adding more islands (especially in the northwest), but overall, there is a greater water-to-land ratio than on Earth.
If anything, I would say DON'T put a whole bunch more islands in the northwest - it will make the map too symmetrical, in my opinion. What about scattering a bunch of them in that lower-central ocean, between the two southern continents? That way the whole upper left quadrant of the map is left open for a cartouche/legend/title to balance out the map without artificially inducing too much symmetry in the landforms.
That's a good idea, using that area for the legend. Thanks for the input on island placement!
You've got distortion issues, particularly if you want to match up with your previous regional map. You can't just zoom in and out. World and regional maps need to be in different projections.
Judging by the aspect ratio, you appear to be aiming for Plate Carree/Equirectangular, which is OK for a base map to feed into software for conversion to other projections, (the math for it is really easy) but it is a horrible projection for finished maps as it has particularly pronounced and ugly looking distortion. If you don't include that distortion, then it's the land itself that's distorted.
To convert your original map to this projection, you would have to do something like this to it:
reproj.png
Otherwise what you've drawn in your new map is actually something like this:
stereo.png
For the most part I'm not too concerned--though I did notice the effect shown in the bottom picture when I used it as a texture for a planet in Universe Sandbox. I appreciate the advice, but I don't think it's necessary for me to go that in-depth with the mapping process (though I might explore it in the future) for this one.
Thanks again, it was especially helpful that you included visualizations.
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