WIP stereographic world map

[vorropohaiah]

How much is there a difference beteten the realms and Borders of this map, and what will come into your Atlas? Is it the same time?

in answer to your first question, i think i'll create a similar map to this one, without the extra embelishments (ie. just the two hemispheres) for inclusion within the atlas - 1-per page sort of thing - in a slightly more updated fashion. you know how the same map plate tends to get reused and updated with new colour or details over the years, this could be that sort of thing: this is the original and then whoever crafted the atlas used the same plate as a basis for this one.

[AvuncularMontague]

Old thread, sorry, but this seems the best place to post a response to your stereographic map of Elyden. I had to write and say that of all the fictional maps I have seen, yours appeals to me most in terms of the shape and quality of the coastlines and land masses. At the large scale, the shapes of the continents have a great quality to them. They are interestingly shaped without ever being spindly or grotesque. And at the small scale, the detailed nooks and crannies of the coastlines are excellently done. There's also a lot of variety, which I like because it suggests different kinds of erosion forces at work, or other forces that have local effects on the shapes of coastlines. Recently I was reading about fractal dimensions of coastlines: it turns out that on earth, the crinkliness of most shorelines is independent of scale. So the coast of Norway, which is very crinkly (I hear it won awards :-) is similarly crinkly when viewed at different scales. And the coast of South Africa, which is much smoother, looks similar to itself at different scales. And sometimes I see fictional maps where at the large scale, the coast lines are very smooth, and it's only at the very small scale that it suddenly becomes extra crinkly. So, well done.

Two questions: is this stereographic map a reprojection from another view? (And if so, which was the original view, how did you reproject it, and how much touching up afterwards etc.)

And second, was the resemblance to our Earth subconscious or deliberate? Here are the similarities (and I think the map, and world from what I've seen, are wonderful whatever the case so don't take this as criticism):
The Inner Sea <==> Mediterranean. It has a Europe-like shape above it, and an Africa-like shape beneath it. It has a "Gibraltar" separating it from the sea of serpents (border with the Atlantic), and a "fertile crescent" at the far end (even with a literal Zion!). It has a Greece with very many little islands of the coast and it connects to a Black Sea/Dark Sea. In your world, what would be the Black Sea connects to what would be the Persian Gulf - I love that you can get all the way through. The place names: there are some that sound Greek on the north shore, and some that sound Arabic on the southern shore.

You have a "Scandinavia" protruding out from the continent in the northern hemisphere - I can see the resemblance better on the polar map. (Yours is further east than earth's.)

At the north-eastern tip of your "Asia" is a "Bering land bridge" connecting it to the large continent that would be North America (I mean the connection between the Ialcus Sea and the Sea of Akry). Your "North America" has a "Gulf of Mexico", a fattened "Florida", a "Cape Cod" further up the east coast, and up north, too far to the west, perhaps a mini-Hudson's Bay with a Ungava Bay to its east.

It's separated from your "South America", unlike ours (i.e. your Sea of Aseer is our Panama Canal!) and your South America is a completely different shape. "West Africa" comes very close to the "Gulf of Mexico" and I guess those islands could be like a "Caribbean", much too close to Africa. (Actually the largest one is even shaped quite like Cuba! It's a bit too far from "Florida" though.)

Anyway, I say all that not to be a smart-ass, but because maybe psychologically, subconsciously even, it helps to make your world feel realistic for the viewer/reader.

Cheers - Monty

[vorropohaiah]

Old thread, sorry, but this seems the best place to post a response to your stereographic map of Elyden. I had to write and say that of all the fictional maps I have seen, yours appeals to me most in terms of the shape and quality of the coastlines and land masses. At the large scale, the shapes of the continents have a great quality to them. They are interestingly shaped without ever being spindly or grotesque. And at the small scale, the detailed nooks and crannies of the coastlines are excellently done. There's also a lot of variety, which I like because it suggests different kinds of erosion forces at work, or other forces that have local effects on the shapes of coastlines. Recently I was reading about fractal dimensions of coastlines: it turns out that on earth, the crinkliness of most shorelines is independent of scale. So the coast of Norway, which is very crinkly (I hear it won awards :-) is similarly crinkly when viewed at different scales. And the coast of South Africa, which is much smoother, looks similar to itself at different scales. And sometimes I see fictional maps where at the large scale, the coast lines are very smooth, and it's only at the very small scale that it suddenly becomes extra crinkly. So, well done.

thanks a lot for the comments! its always nice to see someone not just giving a once-over to the map, but actually soaking it up, being rewarded with some of the little details that went into making it

about the coastlines, I was aware of the 'fractal' effect that you mentioned and try to include it in my work, keeping in mind all along what's craggy far out will be similar up close (like the engineers from the Hitchikers Guide, or the Demiurges themselves who shaped the world im mapping).

Two questions: is this stereographic map a reprojection from another view? (And if so, which was the original view, how did you reproject it, and how much touching up afterwards etc.)

yes, its a reprojection of an equirectangular version of the same work map, run through a NASA software called G. Projector to get (almost) any other projection i want. having said that the original equirctangular map is now probably a few years old and hasnt been updated to match changes made to the stereographic (unfortunately, the software doesnt work in reverse so i cant reconvert a touched up sterographic map back into equiretangular), so getting any changes (and there have been a lot, particularly in the north pole) translated to the base equirectangular map is a bit annoying.

And second, was the resemblance to our Earth subconscious or deliberate? Here are the similarities (and I think the map, and world from what I've seen, are wonderful whatever the case so don't take this as criticism):
The Inner Sea <==> Mediterranean. It has a Europe-like shape above it, and an Africa-like shape beneath it. It has a "Gibraltar" separating it from the sea of serpents (border with the Atlantic), and a "fertile crescent" at the far end (even with a literal Zion!). It has a Greece with very many little islands of the coast and it connects to a Black Sea/Dark Sea. In your world, what would be the Black Sea connects to what would be the Persian Gulf - I love that you can get all the way through. The place names: there are some that sound Greek on the north shore, and some that sound Arabic on the southern shore.

You have a "Scandinavia" protruding out from the continent in the northern hemisphere - I can see the resemblance better on the polar map. (Yours is further east than earth's.)

At the north-eastern tip of your "Asia" is a "Bering land bridge" connecting it to the large continent that would be North America (I mean the connection between the Ialcus Sea and the Sea of Akry). Your "North America" has a "Gulf of Mexico", a fattened "Florida", a "Cape Cod" further up the east coast, and up north, too far to the west, perhaps a mini-Hudson's Bay with a Ungava Bay to its east.

It's separated from your "South America", unlike ours (i.e. your Sea of Aseer is our Panama Canal!) and your South America is a completely different shape. "West Africa" comes very close to the "Gulf of Mexico" and I guess those islands could be like a "Caribbean", much too close to Africa. (Actually the largest one is even shaped quite like Cuba! It's a bit too far from "Florida" though.)

Anyway, I say all that not to be a smart-ass, but because maybe psychologically, subconsciously even, it helps to make your world feel realistic for the viewer/reader.

Cheers - Monty

yep it was concious, though largely from a worldbuilding and culture-creating point of view (and isnt as blatant as some other fantasy worlds out there - yes, warhammer, i'm looking at you! the way i see it (and i might be wrong) the old world advanced the way it did thanks to its climate and terrain - the mediterranean sea, favourable climate of continental europe and, earlier on, the fertile crescent and the nile, were all contributors to the rise of 'advanced civilisations' so i felt it necessary to create something similar, though you might notice that the farther away one moves from the inner sea, the less earth-like the map becomes. The continent of Bror (not sure it's labelled yet - its the rectangular one on the south of the eastern hemisphere) doesn't really translate to a world map and southern sammaea (south africe) is far more expansive with a much longer coastline. Iconciously made two 'gibraltar straits' - one to the west and east of the inner sea as i felt it would aid sea travel and trade, helping explain the more advanced cultures of the regions (though in the history im creating, the world is dying and the sea levels are slowly lowering - it wont be long before the Nartheli Strait is drained and travel between the inner sea and the dark sea will be halted, no doubt creating lots of problems to the world economy...

though having said that, now that im seeing it spelled out like this, it does seem more blatant than i had originally thought. also, proportionately, the Mediterranean is much larger than on earth (the world itself is a bit larger than earth as well - equatorial radius 6,028 miles), though your comment about cuba made be smile - never noticed that!

thanks a lot for the comments, and do keep in mind that this is very much alive, though still heavily WIP. - im still labelling it, when i get the chance to, though my 'perfectionism' means that every label necessitaties me creating an entry in my world encyclopaedia with at least a vague description, from a Korachani P.O.V, which also leads to adding more stuff to the encyclopaedia like culture, history, groups, flora fauna etc. so on small dot and label on the map might translate to a day's worth of research and writing. the goal is to get most of the map as heavily labelled as the area around the Inner Sea, which i have been slowly working on for close to a decade now.

[AvuncularMontague]

Thanks for the detailed answers! From the information in your sidebar it appears that you live on the island of Heamm (closest analogy I could find) so I can imagine that you know the Inner Sea very well.

And I wouldn't use the word "blatant" about the resemblance. Another enormous difference is that what I called your "Asia" is tiny in comparison with the real thing. Oh and I didn't mention that your "Scandinavia" is flipped horizontally, so it's grabbing towards the east rather than the west...

One last question about the coastlines. Did you at any stage use any methods like difference clouds, or fractal generation, to get short bits of shore you could plug in and combine? My guess is no - I think they turn out better if someone has the right eye for that sort of thing and just draws it themselves.

Compliments again on the enormity of your project and especially your stick-with-it-ness. This, as much as the actual content you've produced, is inspiring.

[vorropohaiah]

Thanks for the detailed answers! From the information in your sidebar it appears that you live on the island of Heamm (closest analogy I could find) so I can imagine that you know the Inner Sea very well.

I love this! though the world Elyden is roughly analogous with the real world, i never made a concious effort to make any correlation between longitudes and latitudes... having said that, I do live on the island of Malta, which is just south of Sicily. which in the world of Elyden would technically translate to Hoamm. now that's serendipity. Having said that, what i imagine to be the equivalent of malta is actually somewhat farther west, south of the gulf of Skaros. Maleth, which is old phoenecian for malta (which was itself a phoenecian colonly way back when)

And I wouldn't use the word "blatant" about the resemblance. Another enormous difference is that what I called your "Asia" is tiny in comparison with the real thing. Oh and I didn't mention that your "Scandinavia" is flipped horizontally, so it's grabbing towards the east rather than the west...

One last question about the coastlines. Did you at any stage use any methods like difference clouds, or fractal generation, to get short bits of shore you could plug in and combine? My guess is no - I think they turn out better if someone has the right eye for that sort of thing and just draws it themselves.

ive tried using clouds before but dont like the randomness (for this map, in particular rather than in general - if i was creating a random landmass id have no problems using threshold on clouds). the map originated about 8 years ago i its present form, with the inner sea and the surrounding areas drawn on a poster map by hand that was photographed some years later and used as the basis over which i traced an updated coastine with a size 2 brush. i then slowly added more and more to it until i got the full world. then i followed that with a lot of messing about to get a spherical projection i was happy with and went through the painstaking task of reverse engineering the spehrical graticules into equrectangular grids.

Compliments again on the enormity of your project and especially your stick-with-it-ness. This, as much as the actual content you've produced, is inspiring.

thanks again. now that ive settled into my new appartent i hope to get some more work done on this, though work will be slow...

[AvuncularMontague]

In case you thought I'd found Hoamm by looking up its longitude and latitude, no, I just found what looked like an analogous place to Malta. I see what you mean about Maleth -- but there's no correspondong Italy/Sicily to complete the analogy.

[Diamond]

now that ive settled into my new appartent i hope to get some more work done on this, though work will be slow...

Some work is better than no work; I was hoping this hadn't died on the vine!

[vorropohaiah]

In case you thought I'd found Hoamm by looking up its longitude and latitude, no, I just found what looked like an analogous place to Malta. I see what you mean about Maleth -- but there's no corresponding Italy/Sicily to complete the analogy.

I thought that wasn't right! I don't actually have my maps at the moment so couldnt check. feeling embarrassed now :p

Some work is better than no work; I was hoping this hadn't died on the vine!

yeah, not that there's much to update with - mostly it's just random addition of labels around the map, no nothing that really warrants a new update pic. I guess that will come once I've done more work on the peripheral stuff like the moon, constellation hemispheres, and other border stuff. I was also thinking (as per someone's suggestion earlier on in the thread) of including some nation flags/emblems, though how many to add? just the inner sea nations or farther afield as well? they'll also take up a lot of room on the map. honestly i should have done a mock-up earlier on as at this rate ill probably end up redisigning a lot of the borders, wasting a lot of old work. ah well

[Eilathen]

Hey, good to have you back, vorro! Looking forward to any and all maps you'll produce!

Some work is better than no work; I was hoping this hadn't died on the vine!

Look who's talking ...

[kurtzknight]

I love this map. It inspired me to make a stereographic map as well. Thanks for the great work.