[WIP] World of Cirrane

[persona-non-sequitur]

Howdy, dudes!

Cirrane is my homebrew game world; I've been working on the world map on and off for a little over a week now. I'm trying to keep it fairly realistic in style without necessarily showing every tiny detail

This is just a rough sketch to lay out mountains and biomes, drawing some reference from real-world maps. There's something bugging me about the mountains though, I just can't put my finger on what it is.

[Riorlyne]

I’m not very knowledgeable on the subject, but to me your mountains look a bit off because the ranges are going in all different directions. Perhaps if (especially within the same island) they were more parallel-ish it might look more natural. To help me with where to put my mountain ranges, I drafted a quick layout of my world's tectonic plates and then, where plates collided, added mountain ranges along the edge of impact (if on land) or drew in chains of islands (if in the ocean).

I like what you've go so far though. It's a great texture in the ocean.

[persona-non-sequitur]

Here's an update at the finished size. I've changed some of the coastlines as I thought some of them were too regular and the southeastern continent was almost rectangular. I still have to draw political boundaries, add place names, and add the final details like the compass and scale. I'm going to add some color variation to the grasslands and desert on the western continent, which should help sale the size of the world.

[persona-non-sequitur]

I’m not very knowledgeable on the subject, but to me your mountains look a bit off because the ranges are going in all different directions. Perhaps if (especially within the same island) they were more parallel-ish it might look more natural. To help me with where to put my mountain ranges, I drafted a quick layout of my world's tectonic plates and then, where plates collided, added mountain ranges along the edge of impact (if on land) or drew in chains of islands (if in the ocean).

I like what you've go so far though. It's a great texture in the ocean.

Thanks! I didn't see this before I posted the update. I am going to rework the mountains so they run more or less parallel. I think that will also give me more room or grassland; IMO right now too much of the land is taken up by mountain.

[Riorlyne]

No worries - my post was detained for a bit till I was approved as a legitimate member and not spam.

If you don't mind my asking, how much of your world does this map show? From what you've got here, it looks like it's mainly the north, with the land that's not white/covered in ice being all of a similar climate.

[persona-non-sequitur]

It's supposed to be the entire world, but the scale is way off. The more I look at it the more problems I see! I'm going to resize the mountains and add more color variation to help with that.

[Riorlyne]

Not sure if you've heard of the online Map to Globe tool, but I found it very useful when checking to see what my continental shapes and climate patterns look like when plunked onto a globe. You just need a map in equirectangular form (twice as long as it is tall), and upload it with the image tab in the top left. Beware though - it's very distracting!

[persona-non-sequitur]

Thanks! I haven't heard of Map to Globe before, but it's already proving helpful; my map wasn't at 2:1 so I changed the size so it's wider now. I'm also going to go back pretty much to square 1 with it, I've already scrapped the terrain I'd done and I'm reworking the shape and layout of the continents, especially for the western hemisphere. Right now I think it's kind of blobby.

I'm at work right now (shh! ) but I'll post my progress when I get home.

[Grine]

What software are you using there?

[persona-non-sequitur]

I'm using Photoshop CS2 with a tablet.

As promised, here is the newest WIP.