AERLAAN – A playground built for a muse

[bandersnatch]

Hey Bandersnatch (great name by the way!)

Welcome to the guild and thank you for the compliments

Re: the planet and moon images, the surfaces were painted on equirectangular canvases and then wrapped around a sphere 3D mesh in photoshop. Then rasterised the spheres when i was happy with them. Then took the layers into the main image and composited them. NOTE: nothing about Aerlaan's system is written in stone at the moment (given that i'm now working on Aerlaan version 3.0) I will probably go back and do full 3D renders of the system using Blender. THere are some really great planet rendering tutorials out there. But that will not be for a VERY long time...LMAO. I still have a metric crap ton of work to do on Aerlaan before i can even get to the point where i'm working on the actual map itself.

PaGaN

Great, thanks!
If I understand it right you're an artist, right?
Is there some of your work online?
I just started learning how to draw / illustrate seriously myself, so I am curious

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[PaGaN]

Hey Pixie!

Thanks for the nuggets! For the left box, i agree with you about the two divergent boundaries joining and becoming a slip strike and it looks more elegant. That would take care of the western most edge of the new rift system and i guess it could/should be able to explain the other problem areas too.

I've mocked it up quick, below. Do you think this is plausible? it makes my head hurt less but...



with time i can see these divergent boundaries joining up into a continuous divergent boundary running NW to SE.

I think my problem is that i'm stuck on the thinking that because the rifts is making brand spanking new oceanic crusts that this new crust will automatically begin subducting the older oceanic crusts that it touches and must therefore form island arcs. Maybe this doesn't/isn't always the case.

[PaGaN]

ignore the flipped version, lol. i forgot to remove it from the post.

[PaGaN]

Okay, so I rejigged the "problem areas" thanks to the sanity check from Pixie.



I'll come back to the tectonics map later and make a more "elegant" version as this was just a fairly dirty pass to get it all down (i need to name the plates, add speeds of movement etc) but for now I'm now moving on to the coast lines

WOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!



Im thinking i'm going to have to sketch on a sphere to avoid the dreaded distortion for the regions beyond 60 degrees north and south.

[PaGaN]

WOOHOO! COASTLINES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Thanks Kacey)

Not finished yet, just some tweaking left (probably some changes to the northern glaciated regions (maybe extending them a little more polar so they are similar to the southern glaciations) more islands, adding Aerlaan's Hotspot Hawaii equivalents, inlets etc...) but i think that what is here is a representation of what the tectonics have indicated. The lines are pixelated because i used PS pencil but i'm going to increase res which will smoth them out and I will also maybe give them a stroke. WIP people...WIP.

The first image is just the water and the coasts. the land to see ratio is 32%



The second image has the continental shelf and plate boundaries and movements so you can see why what is what (as far as i was able to understand)



I will work on a gray scale map tomorrow and update/tidy up the tectonics and add plate names as i changed a couple of things since the last update (thanks Pixie). Also, gave Aerlaan a japanese geological analog.

What do you guys think?

PaGaN

[kacey]

The land shapes look awesome PaGaN, all the time you put into this was definitely worth it, it looks beautiful you did a good job on the coast line... I'm a little jealous actually of what you've achieved here and now I have to catch up since I restarted my coast today, but this has given me a good dose of inspiration to keep going. I can't say much about the techtonics, I'm sure someone more knowledgeable will pop by and comment on that, but you have some really interesting areas for building cultures and trade routes here... I really like this so far.

[PaGaN]

Thanks Kacey, that means a lot and I couldn't have done that without some wisdom on "meditative scribbles"

Still got some refining to do but sooooooo glad to get this down. Realised i'm also not 100% sure on whether North should be south and east be west. Lordy! The questions this stuff makes us ponder...lmao.

Can't wait to see what's new with the Unexplored Land

[PaGaN]

think i'm finished refining the coastlines, up-rezed the image and eliminated the pixelation as i said.

Added islands and tweaked coasts/ in know that there will be lakes etc... but i can't place those until i know what the precipitation patterns will look like for Aerlaan. That will be interesting.

Anyway, here's the latest (as i said before, i still can't decide which orientation i prefer, keep flipping horizontal and verticle):



refining the tectonics map now. working on a gray scale version for that so that it's easier to see. Will include plate names and use more refined brush strokes for the various boundaries.

Also, after that i may run up a map to show the age of the various sea floors (seems as i am now able to actually represent that...LOL)

Feedback, as ever, is greatly appreciated.

PaGaN

[PaGaN]

So, here is the tectonics map as mentioned.



At this point, unless someone chimes in with a big ol' "whoa nelly! wait up, this is all wrong!" i'm going to be moving on with elevation.



PaGaN

[Charerg]

It does look fairly solid overall. Looking forward to seeing the elevations and the climates after that!