Ethiedus WIP - Hitting some snags

[Azélor]

You water placement reminds me of a tub because all the water seems to converge toward the middle. It means that most of the lakes are surrounded by mountains or some land elevation. As Pixie said that's not impossible, if it's a small archipelago then it's like a lagoon/ a crater but if your map is showing large landmasses, it look pretty odd.

[Niasis]

I took into account your advice, Pixie and Azelor. I made a scale, realized my world was way too small to be the whole world, and decided I basically needed to start all over and expand hugely. So the past two days I've been doing that! I think this version looks much better (thanks to Coyotemax's wonderful textures). I've tried to make the waters less tub-like. No wonder they were looking weird. Hopefully this one will be easier to work with now that it has a scale. I tried to make the inland waters bright enough so that you could see them here, they're nearly invisible in my working map, but that's only temporary... So here's the latest effort:

expanded world working5waterlight.jpg

[Pixie]

So, if I get it right, this is a whole-planet-view?

If so (I used your scale to some simple measurements) - your equator circumference is about 4x smaller than that of Earth's. Is it intended?
Also, if this is a whole planet map, then a linear scale is wrong to use (because a planet is actually round and a rectangular map distorts shapes and distances). If you are drawing a whole planet map, mark latitude and longitude lines instead.

Well, and if so, I think that before making it a nice looking map with earthly textures, you could decide a few things on your planet climate. You don't need to go into much detail, but just decide whether there are polar ice caps or not, deserts at tropical latitudes or not, etc...

And also, if this is a planetary map, it has very weird/unlikely distribution of land (but you may well choose to ignore this bit - I don't want to put you down)

[Niasis]

Oh, hmm.. Is it bad that I have no idea how to do that (mark lat and long lines)? I mean, I can draw a line, but I wouldn't know where to place them.

It is meant to be smaller than Earth. It's just a little fantasy planet. Though 4x smaller does seem a bit much, doesn't it? Got a lot of "perhaps" and "maybes" running around in my head at the moment, as to whether I should make this a known-world view and/or map out a lot more world... It keeps looking smaller and smaller to me. I have a feeling this will be WIP for quite a while.

And I suppose it's only to be expected that my land would look weird. First attempt and all, with no prior knowledge of what the fudge I'm doing. Do you have any suggestions for how I could make it less weird? Did I space them out too much? I've been thinking about adding some more land/islands so it wouldn't look as sparse in some areas.

[AlexSchacher]

And I suppose it's only to be expected that my land would look weird. First attempt and all, with no prior knowledge of what the fudge I'm doing. Do you have any suggestions for how I could make it less weird? Did I space them out too much? I've been thinking about adding some more land/islands so it wouldn't look as sparse in some areas.

The land masses/islands feel too evenly spaced out. I wouldn't add more land/islands in the empty spaces as that is probably the problem in the first place, if you keep putting in land where there is the biggest area of ocean, the map becomes too symmetrical everywhere with no big oceans left. This is definately something ive struggled with aswell. Its hard, but maybe try drawing out continent and island shapes randomly and asymmetrically.

[Niasis]

Thanks for the comment AlexSchacher! I've been fiddling with it a lot and removed some of the islands I was starting to add, and I think it does look better with fewer. I did add some landmasses to the very edges, because I enlarged the map by about 20% (my computer is furious with me) and I felt it did need something around the edges. I think I'll call the biggest open space the Endless Ocean. I also made a grid of latitude and longitude lines per Pixie's suggestion. I'm not 100% sure I did it correctly, or even 80% sure, but I made a gallant attempt, I feel. I did decide I wanted polar ice caps.

Here's where I stand now, with and without the grid:
expanded world working9.jpg

expanded world working9-2.jpg

If anyone's interested I'll post a few globe images. I don't want to flood the forums with too many pictures...

Aaaaand submit... *bites nails* I am so grateful for every reply, by the way. I can't grow very much without helpful criticism.

[Pixie]

Now this has a completely different feel to it. Adding the ice caps makes it look like a whole planet instead of an archipelago. And the graticule turned out just fine as well.
This much is just gains, imho.

However, I wonder where you want to go from here.
- The land distribution is a little odd as the continental bits are too spread and there are almost no perceptible tectonic boundaries. This is just fine if you wish to leave it, but it is also a dimension you can improve.
- You could also work out the climate distribution, but one could assume so many small continents adrift would result in a lot of maritime climate (rain and nice overall temperatures). Still there is room for improvement there as well.
- Etc... my point is that this is now a good basic planet to work on - well done!