Well, to have an idea about how normal those mountains would be, I think a few questions have to be asked first:
How large is the area in question?
And how high do you plan the mountains to be?
And finally, perhaps the most important question: Is the present topography formed by plate tectonics (as on Earth), and if so, does the area depicted here consist of a single plate or multiple plates, and which way are they moving?
Oh, and a final question regarding the inland sea: is the area simply continental crust that has been flooded (like the Hudson Bay, for example), or is this actual oceanic crust (like the Red Sea or the Mediterranean)? If the prior, it's not a problem, just remember to keep it shallow. In the latter case, however, it's slighly harder to explain, because then you'd kind of expect it to be either closing (like the Mediterranean), which would imply the presence of mountains, or expanding (like the Red Sea), which would again imply mountains (and also the shorelines should fit each other like the pieces of a puzzle).
This is of course only relevant if you want to take tectonics into consideration. However, if you're aiming for realistic topography, it can be worth it to put at least some thought into the forces that are responsible for creating Earth's topography, since that can help you to determine the landscape of your world.
One comment I can make off-hand is that having both an island arc and a mountain range on the south-west margins of the continent isn't necessarily normal. The general rule tends to be that you have either island arcs (if the continent is diverging from the Ocean, like the Asian margins of the Pacific), or mountain ranges (if the continent converges towards the Ocean, like the American margins of the Pacific), but usually not both at the same time (though I guess it's still possible in some situations, just not necessarily normal).
1. not big, like Europe or Australia. Mb like Africa. (not sure)
2. the middle ranges should be highest mountains in world like Caucasus or Hymalayas, i think. Other mountains not so big.
3. Sea was a flooded.
I can change this sea(blue line) In small b area can be islands like Greece.(but not sure)
Thank you for help.
Always nice to see another iteration of your Kronos Maps Harrg. Look forward to checking in on your progress.
Cheers,
-Arsheesh
Well, if you're planning on depicting an Australia-sized area, I'd aim for just one or two plates. Too many, and it becomes really implausible (technically, you'd want to figure things out on a planetary scale, if you really plan to do the tectonics in-depth). Many of the lower mountain ranges can be explained by either volcanism or as old ranges that are the result of older collisions (the Urals, Appalachians, and many others). This means that you don't need (or even want, necessarily), an active tectonic boundary for each mountain range. However, in the place where you want the highest mountains in the world (the west-east oriented range in the middle?), you would need an active tectonic boundary.
So, basically you'd have a continent formed by two converging plates. The rest I'd drop, it's a good idea to keep it simple if you're not doing the tectonics in detail. It's worth noting that there aren't any (major) plates that consist of only continental crust. They typically have a leading edge of continental crust, with a trail of oceanic crust formed at a mid-oceanic ridge. So, two continental plates colliding sounds perfectly plausible. Then you need to decide which plate is being subducted. If you look at the Himalayas, for example, all the mountains are formed on the side of the Eurasian plate, whereas you have an area of lowland on the side of the plate being subducted (the Indian plate, in this case). So, generally speaking you'd expect the topography on the side of the subducting plate to be much higher in comparison to the topography of the plate that is being subducted.
Another thing worth noting is that a subduction zone (and therefore, the mountains formed via subduction) have a strong tendency to form a convex curve (convex on the subducting side). Again, the Himalayas is a good example. This is because it's less work to subduct a plate in this fashion. However, the other side of the coin is that if a concave subduction zone is present, you'd expect the highest peaks to appear there (like the Altiplano in South America), precisely because concave subduction takes more force and causes a greater degree of deformation as a result.
Here's a very quick and ugly draft of how (I think) the tectonics that explain the present topography should look (of course, this is just a very quickly drawn suggestion, nothing authoritative, feel free to use, modify or to ignore):
Kronos Tectonic Draft.jpg
Here, purple represents a convergent continent-continent boundary, blue is a subduction zone (where oceanic crust is being subducted), and green is a transform boundary (the plates moving sideways). The arrows are drawn on the upthrown side (the subducting side, in other words). The orange lines are there to highlight old mountain ranges that are the result of past collisions/volcanism (and as a result should be relatively low and eroded, like the Scandes or the Urals, for example). If you decide to use this suggestion (or something similar), it's worth noting that there would probably be some island arcs appearing along the oceanic subduction zones (the blue boundaries), on the upthrown side.
Last edited by Charerg; 02-26-2017 at 05:04 PM.
mini-update
Looking good. Mind sharing how you made it? (I'm always looking for new techniques)
Thank you. I use Pixie style for made it. And this https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ad.php?t=30277. Sorry for my english.)
Thanks. The mountains from that tutorial are the most real looking I've seen out of Wilbur.
Hey Harrg, this is looking great. Really good looking and convincing. I think Charerg gave you good hints concerning the probable tectonics.
Thanks for calling it my style, although it's a general topographic style that I copy, just like you do, so I can't take much credit. I think you're in for thousands of man-hours of work to finish this map, it's a huge area and you've got a seriously big file. On that note, I wish you strength, perseverance and a lot of free time, because you're going to need it.
One advice: if you ever turn this continent into actual maps, you can leave less ocean around the land and maybe even not show all the land - large continents look larger on a map when not all its ends are seen.
Second advice: save a copy of this, in poor quality, smaller fize size, and get in on Google Earth as an overlay. Then, from there, choose where this continent would be and how big it would be. Then, using the grid (latitude/longitude) and the ruler tool, you could establish size and location to your liking.
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