First Map Progress: Westrea

[Rickon]

Hello, I've been occasionally looking on this forum for inspiration and help in the progress of my map projects. Finally I've decided to create an account and personally ask for opinions.

Been working on a currently unnamed map of a continent with similar climate as of northern- and central Europe & the size of Europe. I've started to draw up the mountains.
What is your opinion on the mountains and general shape of the continent?
V. 0.1
Topographic Worldmap MountainQ.png
V. 0.2
Topographic Worldmap sharingiscaring.png
V. 0.3
Topographic Worldmap shary.png
V. 0.4 - Quickly added the old tectonic plates and some new approximate location of mountains (the low opacity is the old version). How do they look? Are they even slightly realistic?
Topographic Worldmap tectonic plates & mountains.png


All my works are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License unless stated otherwise.

[Falconius]

Welcome! I like that continent shape quite a lot. With the mountain indications that is really too unspecific for me to tell, this looks like you are building them up from the bottom which is a perfectly valid method, but makes it hard to tell where they are going for those unfamiliar with your idea. Assuming those are the hills and such leading up to mountains they seem fine, sort of like the land formed a ridge from north to south then got squished from the edges in.

[Rickon]

Oh yeah, I'll try to add to it once I'm home. It is as you say hills etc leading up to the major mountains. I will add minor highlands, mountains and hills later.

[Hai-Etlik]

Honestly, this looks more like an island to me. Just looking at it and estimating a size, I'd say it's smaller than Vancouver Island. If pushing it a lot, maybe it's the size of say Honshu.

[Diamond]

I agree with Hai-Etlik. I really love the shape of the landmass and the way your design is going, but either that continent is ultra-mountainous, or it's more like a large island.

[Rickon]

Alright, good I posted here before going any further then. Since you two said that the less I can see this as a continent... What methods do you people use to come up with a good continent shape?

[Gidde]

Honestly the shape is still really good. It's just that there are less mountains in a full continent. Mountains take up roughly 10% of the land on Earth. So when we see something this mountainous, we see island, because islands are often entirely mountainous.

[Rickon]

Added a new image with less mountains. How does it look now?

[Gidde]

There you go! Now that looks like a continent

[Rickon]

Awesome! Will start with more detailed topography from now on then.