WIP scalable Map of Continent - a source for stories and maps

[randigpanzrall]

Dear Community,

For a long period I´m working on this continent and I think there is much more time neccessary. But to introduce my project, I´ll show you the ongoing efforts to share the pain, fun and attraction and to get interesting feedback. For so far I was just a follower of the many great projects here, now it´s time to start something for my own

The northern part of this continent is worked out an shown in the following pictures. Its the northern region from tundra to desert regions in the south.

The project is done in Illustrator so far and I´m interested in your opinions

Unbenannt-1.jpg

and now closer:

Unbenannt-2.jpg

and focussing on the great Lake region:

Unbenannt-3.jpg

[Diamond]

Wow, that's really great. That to me is the most awesome thing about Illustrator, that you can scale up and down like this. That's the main reason I want to get that program.

[Viking]

This is amazing work so far. I can't imagine how long this has taken so far given it is vector art!

[randigpanzrall]

This is amazing work so far. I can't imagine how long this has taken so far given it is vector art!

Well, in fact it´s about a half year of work. I think there will be another half year to get it done, but my intention is to focus on some regions later for some other kind of maps and maybe for some stories ... in the background there are some roots like climate cards, nations an ethnics etc. I will attach this from time to time, supporting the ongoing work

[Falconius]

That is incredible. What an unbelievable amount of work you've put into this, I look forward to seeing how if progresses. And also can't wait for labels, you have some interesting features there.

[Azélor]

All just with Illustrator, I'm impressed !

[randigpanzrall]

Now another example,

it´s an island, nearly as big as Great Britain, with some parallels in history, too. The island has quite a good standard for the time of the world and the inhabitants are from 80% "celtic" equivalents and 20 % of "germanic" equivalents. The large eastern panhandle protected the island against southern aggressors of a nation similar to the roman empire in the past, which could´t manage to invade the island. but which took some of the island´s former possessions on the continent. So far for the history.

Next things for the continent will be the climatic surroundings and the basics in clima zones in order to create a realistic continent...

Unbenannt-4.jpg

[randigpanzrall]

To look at the whole planet, I start with the climate. First the initial clima-zones with low grade of climatic detailization an without looking at major winds and sea-currents at the moment. The large eastern continent is not yet a finished version but for the moment it´ll do. The planet in fact has a certain imbalance on landmasses, the southern hemisphere wasn´t covered with much land, while the northern has some land.

climazones 0.5 Kopie.jpg

What do you think? Any apparent mistakes at this moment ? Tipps? Ideas?

Thank you so far

[Azélor]

It seems alright. Nice projection map btw. If it's just the major climate zone, you don't need to be precise because there is a lot of differences in each zone. The difference between a savana climate and a tropical rainforest for example. They are both under the tropics, generally but are really different.

If you use something more advanced such as the Koppen climate zone classification, then yes you will need to be more precise and there are more things to consider.

[Gumboot]

As far as climate, the one thing that strikes me is that there's very little land mass, particularly in the south. That has a pretty significant affect on global climate, lowering temperatures. Even on earth the southern hemisphere is notably colder than the north because of this. Bear in mind that many climate maps of the world end at the southern tip of South America, but in the north extend all the way to the North Pole. That's quite a distortion; Cape Horn is at 56 S; a lower latitude than most of Russia, all of Scandanavia, Greenland, Alaska, and half of Canada. As a result it conceals the off-centre position of the climate zones.

Compare, for example, the climate of Porto (Portugal) and Wellington (NZ). Both are coastal cities, and both at about the same latitude, but their climates are hugely different.