Lyu'min - Recreating My Universe

[ImperialLuresha]

Over the last 8 years I have been working on creating my own fantasy world. A lot of the original material started when I was a child and I have only added to the lore and the art. Recently I have revisited my maps and added a few continents. I am open to any criticism or questions. I am also open to working with other members if anyone is interested.

This is the overall atlas I have so far.
atlas.jpg

The continent of Massalin
Massalingeographic.jpg

The continent of Serragea
Serrageageographic.jpg

I plan to add the cities soon.

Any suggestions on whether I should put forests, swamps etc?

[Glamdring804]

Well, if you want to be geographically accurate, then the locations of the forests will be dictated by the directions of the prevailing winds, and how they carry moisture across the continent.

You're map generally looks good, the only problem I can see is with the southern river. The northern most leg of the waterway is too close to the eastern sea. It looks like it wants to flow towards that inlet instead. Perhaps you can move it west a little, and maybe put some hills in that region ti divert the flow in the desired direction.

[waldronate]

I wouldn't worry too much about moving the rivers. A low ridge of hills that has persisted since the river formed would be enough to keep it herded that way. Those hills likely would be too small to show on a map of this scale.

To get an idea of the biomes on your map would require knowing how those maps are arranged on the planet, especially how far north or south of the equator the top and bottom edges are. Once the placement is determined, latitude, ocean currents, distance from the ocean, and winds will determine the amount of moisture and temperature at a given point. A good estimate of biome can be made from the annual averages of those two values.

[ImperialLuresha]

Thanks for the advice, I will incorporate these sugesstions as I finish the geographic features.

[ImperialLuresha]

atlas2.jpg

So i went ahead and finished the atlas, I usually focus on the politics of my maps, hence I am not great with geography. Any suggestions on how to proceed with determining biomes, climates etc?

[waldronate]

First step is to determine the placement of this map on your globe. The biomes will be radically different if the map is centered on the equator as compared to centered on one of the poles.

A good step before or after placement on the globe is to include broad strokes for mountains. An increase in altitude is roughly equivalent to an increase in latitude (e.g. treeline is a feature of both altitude and latitude).

To reuse one of my favorite pictures (and not just because it looks vaguely naughty):
DSC00975a.jpg

Once you have determined the top and bottom latitudes on your map, you can use this picture to get a very rough idea of what the biome types should be compared to latitude. Increases in altitude will shift the apparent biomes poleward, but that's usually a fairly local effect.

[ImperialLuresha]

Thanks for the advice and the reference material. Using those principles I updated my atlas with biomes that seem appropriate to me. Please let me know if there are any glaring impossibilities. atlasbiomes.jpg

[ImperialLuresha]

So following the biomes that I determined I finished up the continent of Valarina. Unfortunately I am not great at handdrawing so I used brushes to visually represent the biomes. Im open to all advice and critique

valarinageographics.jpg

[Charerg]

First off, great start! I have a few suggestions regarding the biomes though:

Mediterranean climates basically only appear on the western coast. You have a few places where they seem to appear on the eastern coast, those areas should probably be subtropical instead (similar to southern China).

Also, I think you made the deserts appear in a bit too many places, large deserts tend to occur on larger continents rather than islands (or in the rainshadow of mountains). I'd probably replace most of the deserts in the westernmost continent with savannah.

[ImperialLuresha]

Thanks for the input, i made the changes to the western most continent and some of the Mediterranean biomes. Thanks =D