Ilion: Globe and Associated Maps

[Malicious-Monkey]

This is a globe I made for an ongoing worldbuilding/writing/art project. It's the canon on which I will base all subsequent world and regional maps of the planet, so it's got to be my best work or else I'll regret it later.

fiveglobewithlabeles1.jpg

It may look finished but it's not. I'm not happy with the coastlines (too freaking smooth) and I'm in the process of fractal-ing them up to something more closely resembling real contents. There will be more islands, too.

This is the process I used to make the globe. It's easier to add to the landmasses than to subtract from them; I don't want to risk damaging the globe trying to scrape off the crust.

sea ice.jpg
(before)

Because it represents a tidally locked planet, the globe has two sides, a vegetated light side and an icy dark side. The dark side was easy to modify due to the limited palette and another reason I'll get to in a second.

DSC_0329.JPG
DSC_0330.JPG
(after - better, yes or no?)

This is the light side.

globe-w-atmo.jpg
(booooring)

Now here's reason #1 this side will be ten times harder than the other side.

biomes.jpg tectonic-plates-lightside.jpg landing-sites-labeled.jpg

Yup. For every change I make on that globe, I will have to make a corresponding edit to the maps. So naturally, I'm a little timid about making sweeping changes to the light hemisphere. That, and some aspects of the climate and geography are set in stone, making this an even greater challenge. Here's what I've braved so far.

DSC_0328.JPG

[su_liam]

Kind of neat. I'll be watching this with great interest. Great interest indeed.

[Malicious-Monkey]

By the way, if anyone has comments/suggestions for my maps (font, color, transparency etc.) now's the time. I'd like to fix them up in one fell swoop once the globe's completed.

[Ilanthar]

The fonts are just fine imho. Cool idea btw. Did you use a good old earth globe or did you made one?

[Malicious-Monkey]

The fonts are just fine imho. Cool idea btw. Did you use a good old earth globe or did you made one?

I painted on top of a decorative 8 inch desk globe I bought at World Market.

[arsheesh]

Neato! Looks likes it was a fun project.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Ilanthar]

Thanks! I was thinking of doing some globes myself... I have those big balls in styropor, hence my question.

[Malicious-Monkey]

It seems I am more brave than I thought.

DSC_0331 small.jpg

Here's the new finished product. I've taken pictures of the other sides as well but haven't processed them yet.

lightside.jpg

One thing I do is make a subtle atmosphere effect using the stroke outline effect in PS around a circular selection. I find the gradient tool hard to customize so instead I grow and shrink both the selection and the outer glow until I have enough to make a gradient, then I blur. It's not perfect and I need to add more layers to it to smooth it out, but it'll do for now. This is what the atmo looks like on its own, at 100% transparency (for the image I reduced transparency to 40%).

atmo.jpg

[Malicious-Monkey]

I've taken some time off to work on other projects. I'm back now to tackle those pesky new coastlines I've built onto the globe. The hardest part is accuracy; I'm mostly just eyeballing it at this point.

new coastlines 1.jpg

[Malicious-Monkey]

Mapping of the new coastlines is complete. Other maps (plates, etc.) will be adjusted later.

before and after.jpg