Corilliant's First World

[Corilliant]

Corilliant's First World

About: This is a basic outline map of a world I'm likely to work around with for a fair bit of time. It comprises of four main continents, hitherto unnamed; multiple smaller landmasses and lots of white paper. I wish to expand this into a larger set of maps, discussing political and climate statuses, and perhaps turn it into a detailed information collection.
That'll depend on if I'll ever find the time to do so!

Created: This map was first outlined on shoddy A4 scrap paper back in late 2013, before I dug it out yesterday, changed slightly and sketched it onto decent A3 paper. I then inked it, and scanned it at school because my good scanner (only scanner, note) is A4 only. Heh.

It looks better when you click it, apparently.

continental.jpg



Corilliant

[SteffenBrand]

First of all: You really should ink in (digitally?) what the land is and where the water is. It's a bit unclear and I can only assume.
Beside that: I like the rugged lines for the coast. I'd love to see your process on this. Do you have any experience in mapmaking?

[Corilliant]

Depends on what you call 'mapmaking'. If you mean hand drawn, I feel fairly confident on developing them in black and white. When it comes to digital colouring, I kinda suck. Hooray for tutorials. Geology; I'm working with my teacher at the moment on how I can create my maps...
I am going to ink them digitally later, but not this week I think. I was going to quick-paint the ocean earlier, but I would need to again, ink it first; tolerance level and quick-paint tools are not my friends today.
They will be tomorrow, I hope.

And thank you for reviewing

[Naima]

Seems a good shape but is hard to understand what is land and what is sea.

[Corilliant]

Seems a good shape but is hard to understand what is land and what is sea.

Okay.
Maybe I should try and do that now...

[jbgibson]

Ha - I take the land-sea ambiguity as a fascinating effect - I can stare at the map and make it bounce back and forth between land-water and water-land, in my head :-). You have a good eye (and hand) for an appropriate variety of roughness in coastlines.

You made it wrap east-west, which is attention to detail. It's easiest of course when the paper edges can be made to fall in all land or all ocean, but continent configurations like yours can't. Think about projections, though - you have an aspect ratio that isn't 1:2, like a simple equirectangular projection would have. Additional N-S stretching like yours, particularly since you seem to not go all the way to 90 degrees N or S, could be something like a Mercator-ish view. And that brings up the thought of what distortion you might WANT to be showing. Either projection gets more distorted as you go poleward - the first in shape, the second in size. So a practiced eye would expect either vertical squashed-ness, or ballooning (the old Greenland-big-as-Africa effect on schoolroom Mercator world maps).

Where you have a similar degree of coastal detail at all latitudes, wrapping your linework back on a globe would show unexpected distortions and sizes. There's straightforward free apps that will do that re-projecting for you, digitally. Are you just going to show us map progress from scans, and do all your work on paper, or now that you have linework digital will you work on it digitally?

Nice shapes, by the way.

[Corilliant]

Thank you! I will make use of that.
I think I'm going to work on it digitally from now on.

This is to define the continents, as opposed to black and white (what a pun) madness
I've never been able to produce something like this before; I must thank my Graphics teacher.

continent3.jpg

And a rough test with climates using layers:
continent4.jpg


Easier to see now?

[Azélor]

Much better !

What are the climate colors supposed to represent?

[Corilliant]

Well, I'm thinking that this world is on a 15 degree tilt or so, and has no seasonal change as the planet doesn't revolve around said axis. (Is that viable?)


With the south being closer to the sun, it has more burning plains, and to the north, cold tundra.
Which means that my ice plains at the south are no longer right. Damn.

Edit time...

EDIT: well, It appears that a very studious person known as Azelor has already made a climate explaining thread below mine, I shall have a look

[Azélor]

Even at a 15 degree tilt you still have seasons. The difference of temperature between them is lower and the effect of the monsoon is also lower. The poles are colder during the summer but hotter during winter. It means that the tundra would stretch to lower latitudes since they need to have at least one month with the temperature over the freezing point and that condition is harder to archive. The ice caps will also cover more land. The temperature there never go above 0 Celsius. Deserts would be found closer to the equator but could probably cover less land. Rain forest and desert could be replaced by the steppe in some areas. (I'm talking in comparison to Earth)

The south can't be closer to the star all the time. Unless your planet is tidal locked to the star, the movement of the planet is similar to the movement of planet Earth.
But you are right, the north is colder but it's because the % of water is greater. Also, the north lack a continent to block the polar current that circle around with it's cold water. In the south, the cold currents and hot ones clashes more frequently, allowing a better distribution of temperature. But not in the north. The cold water just stays there just like Antarctica. From that, we could say that the northern mid latitudes are hotter than those in the south because it's not coled by the polar waters. Or not as much as in the south.

Since you don't really have land in the north, I wonder what the sea ice look like during the cold season. Ice can't form if the current is too strong. It's not very significant but I just wonder.