November 2013 Entry - Chako Revisited

[DearCyrus]

I thought this challenge was a great opportunity for me to expand on the world of the map I am already working on. I started with a group of islands roughly the size of Australia (upper right hand corner). I transposed them onto a Fuller projection or Dymaxion map, whichever you prefer I guess. Then I started adding coastline to form the other land masses. I plan on adding color and texture in the coming days, but here is my starting point. I have Already cut out a few trials and everything is lining up (or will be after a few tweaks...). I have a couple mini globes printed on 8.5 x 11 paper. It is kind of exciting! The white is ocean and dark gray is land. Let me know what you think!

### Latest WIP ###
Nov map challenge copy.jpg

[waldronate]

Is there any particular reason for the Dymaxion projection? Fuller did those triangle splits from the basic icosahedron to math the outlines of Earth's continents; using them for other continents doesn't seem particularly helpful.

[DearCyrus]

It has very little distortion of relative size and is fairly easy for a novice such as myself to work with in order to map a globe. Also R. Buckminster Fuller was a brilliant man. Who wouldn't want to emulate his work?

[waldronate]

I'll take that answer as "artistic reasons", then.

[DearCyrus]

Update with land texture and colors.

### Latest WIP ###
Nov map challenge cop.jpg

[Lingon]

The textures are awesome! Really nice mountains! The coastlines don't really match them though, I think it'd be a big improvement if you added more detail to the coasts It's a little hard to see exactly how the continents are shaped in this projection, but I think it looks like they are a bit too evenly sized and spaced… Maybe I'm wrong though.

[DearCyrus]

Thank You! I have been working on my textures. Guess you will just have to fold it up! I am working on getting some pictures up of my folded projection posted. I don't think they are to evenly sized, but spacing may seem a bit too thought out. I am still really new to map making so this might seem silly, but... What kind of detail would be appropriate to add to the coasts?

[Neyjour]

I agree with Lingon...this is looking really wonderful (great job on the terrain and textures!), but adding more detail to the coastlines would make it look so much better! By more detail, I mean more pronounced (and random) dips and protrusions. Lots of scattered rocks and islands just off the coasts would also be good too!

One other thing I noticed is that your coastlines also look a little blurry.

Again, great job so far! I'm really looking forward to seeing more!

[Lingon]

Yeah, as Neyjour said about the coasts, some tiny bays and peninsulas was the kind of detail I was talking about Look at the mountains where they hit the ocean – ridges makes the coastline jag outwards, valleys make it go inwards, and the higher the mountain the more extreme will the jaggedness be.