Hello everyone - I've finally decided to try joining this forum.

I'm kind of coming back to trying to make maps after a period of a few years where I haven't made any - I started with fantasy "treasure maps" to lead my friends around the neighborhood and school fields around the age of seven, and continued to draw not-particularly-original fantasy kingdoms, republics and continents right up to 14 or 15. I kind of stopped for a while after that, since which I've alternated between long gaps of not being able to do much of anything and shorter, more interesting periods of studying planetary science, geography, astronomy, and beginning to make inroads into evolutionary biology. I end up drawing and writing a lot, too.

I've made lots of conworlds, either for abortive attempts at fantasy and sci-fi stories or for their own sake, and have finally decided to come here and look around for tips, ideas and the general (telepresent) company of other map enthusiasts. The prompt for this is that I've started the creation of a setting for a heavily home-brew Pathfinder campaign I'm beginning to set up with some friends and acquaintances, and ideas for the world and it's creatures have been jumping off to the horizon in all directions.

I'm currently trying to map the whole planet in fair detail (for purposes of ocean and air currents, geological and evolutionary history, bio-geographical regions, and places for the characters to venture into the unknown and barely-charted majority of the globe) and the known world ("Our sea", in the greco-latin sense) in and around the planet's antarctic ocean. The world has a climate roughly similar to the mid-Cretaceous, with temperate forests all the way to the poles and a very shallow global temperature gradient, which of course effects the seas and wind patterns and lots of things. I'm currently roughing out a globe and trying to work out how to do some good map projections, for which this place may well turn out very useful.

My cartographic heroes are Chris Wayan and Ian Irvine. I still can't help but smile every time I see "A Part of the Southern Hemisphere of Santhenar".

Anyway I look forward to talking with all of you doubtless very interesting creatures. You have a great deal to teach us, even if only passively.