AERLAAN – A playground built for a muse

[Pixie]

Looking forward to see your results, PaGaN. But no worries, this is a hobby - you just take good care of your mother-in-law first

Question for you though Pixie. Regarding ocean crust to ocean crust subduction, i know this is crucial for figuring our where ones island arcs are going to be, but i'm having trouble figuring out how oceanic crust ends up being subducted by oceanic crust.

Regarding this. Ocean-Ocean subduction exists in some places on Earth, most notably on the caribbean plate, the aleutian islands and the philipines plate. In all three cases one the plate staying on top is the remnant of a now inactive spreading-center (starter oceanic ridge), still, geologists are still struggling to spell out the details of their past lives.
Here's an article I found about the caribbean plate - it's technical, but have a look at the pics

In general, for the caribbean, imagine this:
1 - North America starts to split from S.America, forming an initial spreading center (a bit of oceanic crust eventually).
2 - These two continents were also splitting from Africa (and Europe, which split before), giving room to the Atlantic Ocean.
3 - Eventually, when they all end apart, crust from the Atlantic and crust from the Caribbean meet and one might end up under the other... (which happened!)

[PaGaN]

Thanks Pixie, that's some great information in there and confirms that my suspicions were certainly in the ballpark or even spot on.

Just enjoying a quite night right now with the husband and huskies after saying goodbye my mother in law knowing that she had a great visit

Back to Aerlaan tomorrow night.

Kacey, if you read this post you will find Pixie's post re: oceanic/oceanic plate subduction very helpful and informative.

[PaGaN]

So, not much mapping for me this weekend. I have been conscripted into helping husband with accomplishing two challenges for a work competition (knitting an item of clothing and designing a team logo). LMAO.

Hi hum...(just go with it PaGaN, just go with it)

[PaGaN]

So, I think I'm finally at a stage where I can redo my landmass outlines having spent what is at this point well over a month REALLY figuring out the plate movements from scratch.

I know where the current and historical collisions and subducting zones are, transform zones, divergent boundaries, old mid ocean ridges (somehow now mostly subducted) new and young rift systems, what type of orogeny goes where, where the old orogeny is a the list goes on (including island chains Kacey...)

I ABSOLUTELY refuse to show the working here as it is SOOOO ugly it will turn you to stone. Kacey, your map is a da Vinci compared to what I'm looking at right now..
LMAO. You got nothin to worry about. I WILL show you all once I've moved on a bit.

Question for Kacey: you know I love your coasts. What's your process? Do you start with"blobs" then erase in our brush out as you detail?

I was going to use a noise filter method but have changed my mind and want this whole thing to be hand wrought (which seems fitting considering the hours that's already been invested. Would be stupid to cut corners now).

By the way, I loved your latest update to The Unexplored Land. Been so engrossed in Aerlaans facelift that I haven't had time to post anything about anything for a few days, but awesome work

PaGaN

Edit: Pixie, your advice to Kacey was very helpful to me also and Hassan the geologist is a find...lol

[kacey]

Can't wait to see an update, I'm kind of hiding my progress right now too, trying to figure out the topography is very messy though I may post it anyway embarrassment aside just because I find it helpful when other people actually show the process it takes to get to a finished result. When I first started trying to make maps I would see all these beautiful works on line but when I would start a project it looked so bad I thought it couldn't be fixed, thing is it probably wasn't broken to begin with. Most maps probably look pretty sloppy in the beginning you just have to push through that phase and when people are willing to show that I think it's a great learning tool for others. I gave up on so many projects because I couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel...I'm rambling on you're thread...Sorry.

As for the coast it's honestly just scribbling. I take a 9 pixel brush, hard round pressure to size but don't tick the extra sensitivity button and start scribbling. I draw the basic shape adding and removing pressure as I go so that there's gaps all over and the line weight is varied I try not to make it too bumpy though as I've found earths coasts are actually pretty straight, then once I have a very sloppy broken line for the basic shape I start filling it in around the edges with the same 9 pixel brush trying not to be too careful, just do it real quick and without much thought at this stage and the little gaps and line weights add just a touch of jaggedness. After that if you add a one pixel stroke the imperfections give it a bit of a jaggy edge. But as I said my coast right now is just scribbles I will be going over it again by hand once I'm done with topography and the final coast is set in stone... I'll see if I can whip up a quick one with snap shots of the stages if you're interested.

Sorry again for high jacking you're thread. Hope to see you're updated land forms soon.

Edit... I just drew this up for you real quick so you can see how sloppy it really is, this took all of 20 minutes. Once you scribble around all the edges fill it in however you feel most comfortable and that's it...Just turn off you're troubles from the day and start scribbling, that's the best way I can describe it... Hope that helps.

InkedSketch 4_LI.jpg

I turn down the opacity once I get it filled in and go over it once more usually but any randomness to the edges is just a result of the scribbling.

[PaGaN]

Kacey, that's awesome, thank you for sharing your process. That was very helpful and I love you artistic randomness

What is that PS dohickey dock with the shortcut keys in the top right? Not seen that before. LOL

[kacey]

It's just the shortcut keys I use the most, this one comes with Photoshop you just have to turn it on. I use a surface pro 4 tablet so I don't have a keyboard attached when I'm drawing. I have a more robust dock for other apps like zbrush but for Photoshop I find this is all I need. Photoshop is the only app I've found actually that really is touch friendly, it's got allot of hand gestures that I can use too. I can pinch to zoom and swipe three fingers to undo and it detects the surface automatically so no special setup required. It even has a special touch work space that makes things even more handy and gives more screen space but I prefer the classic setup, and I've gotten pretty quick at navigating the menus for other things.

[PaGaN]

Very cool. Unfortunately I'm in a hopelessly codependent relationship with my cintiq, LOL and there's not much chance of me sitting on the sofa with that on my lap... LMAO.
Regarding zbrush, I'm actually just getting into blender. Never really messed around with 3d before but have finally caved due to the huge amount of help it can bring to environment work i.e. create a rough model and lighting so I can cut down on the guess work during painting. I may hit you up for 3d workflow advice at some point too

[PaGaN]

Most maps probably look pretty sloppy in the beginning you just have to push through that phase and when people are willing to show that I think it's a great learning tool for others. I gave up on so many projects because I couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel....

Forgot to agree with you on this earlier! This goes for ANY creative endeavor i think. Embrace the ugly!!! LOL (That could be a T-Shirt Slogan..LOL...Maybe not). For the longest time i would cripple myself with criticism for the horrible ugly proto-painting/sketch/whatever i was looking at and toss my stylus across the room. I think this only ever really goes once you push through and prove to yourself that you have it in you to turn that ugly ducking into a swan (though sometimes bad is just bad! again, recognizing this is another thing that comes with time and realisation that you have spent 6 weeks working on/fighting with something that should have been solved by the "delete" key).

BUT, even with the above being true, i'm STILL NOT showing my working map...YET. LOL. The next WIP will be the fairly rough landmasses with plates, movements, zones and VERY simplified elevation for review. THEN i will show where all that came from.

[Yasha Oqlie]

What you've got here is pretty fascinating. I love the idea of the two habitable moons around a gas giant.
May I ask a bit about your world? Who are its denizens? Humans? Other races? And also, is there sentient life on all of the habitable planets and moons in your system?
I'm really interested to know more about your world.