Iordanne

[Hawksguard]

Here is my first WIP map here on CG for your consideration, questions, comments and criticisms. It is the first map I have attempted with Photoshop, and later I hope to be adding some more map elements done in Illustrator.

This world first saw life as part of a D&D homebrew campaign from almost 20 years ago, since then it has evolved quite a bit in the form of endless hours of scribbling, note taking, some unpublished short stories and collaborations, as well as a couple major overhauls including one about 5 years ago when I advanced the timeframe to a higher tech level for a GURPS: Transhuman Space campaign. Parts of it I had previously attempted to map out with Campaign Cartographer but said files seem to have been eaten by my old PC, so this project is in part an attempt to recreate them.

Iordanne.jpg

My immediate goal is to create a solid base map from which I can make any number of others in a modern(-ish) atlas style. While magic does exist, I'm aiming for landforms that, at least superficially, give the appearance of having been formed through natural processes. The planet was originally heavily terraformed into a sort of post-Ragnarök Eden. Unfortunately, the tech civilization that has evolved has managed to damage the terraforming controls keeping the planet stable and the planet is starting to revert back to its original icy state. Silly humans.

Current list of things to do:

Add some variation to the base biogeographical regions (it's just a simple gradient at present).
Add forests, rivers and mountains.
Figure out and place the names for all the major land forms that I don't already know the name.
Work on the bathymetry.

Big thanks to all the great tutorials that got me this far. A couple that really helped me on my way were Ascension's PS Atlas Style and Tear's Saderan Tutorial. Both are awesome examples of Photoshoppery goodness. Also, an honorable mention to Arsheesh's GIMP Map Borders tutorial, which I was able to translate to Photoshop and made some very cool looking borders which, alas, did not really go with the map style I was aiming for. But I'm sure I'll use them at some point.

Cheers all and thanks!

[Ascension]

Looks great, man. I like your color transitions from ice to tundra to grassland the most...I'm a sucker for good color.

[jbgibson]

If a map is hand-drawn, I expect some degree of generalization. But there's some point in the range of crayon-on-construction paper to satellite photograph, where I start to expect every nit-picking detai that a camera would seel. This style is way over toward photorealism. While what you show here is nicely plausible, your world seems to have a rule that "all islands are big". Too, your coastlines mostly have a similar degree of jagginess. Grab a google map of somewhere with a lot of coastline - say, Indonesia. No fjiords, of course, but some rough terrain, and indeed some of the coastline is jaggy. Some though is smooth sweeps and curves.

Your landforms are pleasing, and the ranges of mountains seem to work. There's a couple of places where the coastline seems to conflict with the texture. They're not horrible, just slightly jarring. Maybe these:
CoastMismatch.jpg
Frankly, if I'd made a basemap as nice as this, I might stick a city on top of any cosmetic flaws and be done with 'em :-).

I love the inner sea, then the inner-inner sea at the SE of the biggest continent. Nice work!

[Hawksguard]

Not only do I appreciate the nit-picking, I require it! As you say, when striving for accuracy and realism, there is nothing worse than coming across something that makes you go 'what the...", like some guy wearing a Timex in a gladiator movie.

I totally agree with your observations that all the islands are big and there is not enough variation of jaggedness to the coastlines. The island size in particular was something that popped into my head the other day when I was thinking about island chains like Hawai'i of which my map is sadly lacking. The original coastlines I had were actually much more jagged. I guess I'll give another round on smoothing some of them out.

So far I'm pleased with the way it is turning out, much thanks for the comments thusfar. Hopefully I should have another draft ready in a day or so as I've finished most of my previous goals.

[Juggernaut1981]

Honestly I'd be expecting to see a chain of islands probably appearing from the axe-head like shape to the right of the upper yellow circle.

[Hawksguard]

Okay, second draft. I've added rivers, forests and mountains. I changed some of the base biome areas, mostly pushing habitable land and icy areas around due to what should be the prevailing ocean currents. And I added a small cold desert in the S part of the central continent. I smoothed out some of the continental coastlines and added some smaller islands to add some diversity.

Iordanne02.jpg

Think next I am going to focus on adding cities and major roads. Probably will be a lot of tweaking and refining of what I've got so far along the way.

[Steel General]

This is really starting to "come to life", looking forward to the finished version.

[Diamond]

I really like this so far, especially the forests - they look great. Have some rep to keep you enthused!

[Jaxilon]

This is indeed looking good. Keep going.

[Hai-Etlik]

I'll make my usual observations about projection incongruities with the usual caveats that some people don't care or notice the difference so feel free to ignore my advice if you don't mind cartographers, geographers, etc. thinking it looks off.

You seem to be using the Equidistant Cylindrical projection (Also known by several other names). It's an easy projection to understand and implement and works well when you want to wrap it onto a mesh globe in 3D graphics software. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equirectangular_projection

Unfortunately it also has a number of downsides which is why it's not used much for any other purposes. It is neither conformal (angle/shape preserving) nor equal area and in fact distorts both properties dramatically, and the distortion is rather unpleasant looking.

So, it's not really a projection that would normally be used for a global reference map like this.

The distortion would mean that shapes toward the poles should be stretched out horizontally in the map. On your map, they aren't distorted this way, which means that the same shapes on a globe would be distorted and would appear sort of pinched together as they approach the pole.

Also, the compass rose is inappropriate in this projection as it implies that directions are preserved, which is not the case.

Unfortunately, there's no easy fix for this problem. Your map is rather clearly a full globe and there's no way to reinterpret it as being in another projection. That only leaves redrawing it or leaving it looking off (Or putting it another way, not looking off in the right way)

Otherwise it's quite attractive. The style isn't really one I'm fond of, but you do a good job of it.