Errispa

[Diamond]

That's looking pretty good, Mouse. Is the plan still to port that into the style of map you had earlier in the thread, showing the two hemispheres side by side?

[Mouse]

Thanks D

You know... I'm not sure. This world has land that will be heavily bisected by an operation like that, but I can have a go with a number of different projections once I'm done with texturing and shading it

[MapMappingMapped]

Love those realistic continent shapes! And that scroll on the Errispa map is so cool! Crazy work, eager to see those finished. I'll never be able to get the guts to make these huge maps complete with climate - so much thinking!

[Mouse]

Thank you, MMM

Of course you will! It just takes the guts to... ummm.... blatantly ignore the plate tectonics... guess at the climate and hope nobody notices, and... totally start all over again when you can't find the original files because its been a year since you last looked at it

It also helps if you just can't seem to get your teeth into something you're writing, and you just know it would work if only you had the map to make sense of where everyone is/was, and just how many weeks it would take people to get from A to B by various means

There are a lot of things I don't actually like about the land and the mountains. Lots of things are too big, too cartoony, or too blatant etc. You just have to keep working at it till you get something that makes sense.

Just take it one step at a time - get a world of land shapes to work on and take it from there. Fractal Terrains 3 is good for generating worlds if you set it up right, and Wilbur is good for eroding mountain ranges, but there are lots of people who simply draw it how they imagine it, and it all seems to work out fine in the end.

[MapMappingMapped]

It also helps if you just can't seem to get your teeth into something you're writing, and you just know it would work if only you had the map to make sense of where everyone is/was, and just how many weeks it would take people to get from A to B by various means

That is exactly what is pushing me to finish the Lakelands right now. I just can't keep writing without a full map.

[Mouse]

You must be like me, then - I need to have something to stare at while I'm thinking about what happens next and why

This is a re-projection of the existing draft done as an Azimuthal EA (2 hemisphere)

Really not liking the top of the main continent of interest in the right hand hemi!

So you see - its not all plain sailing. You just have to decide what you like least about each version and change it

Errispa AE 2 hem.jpg

Things are a bit slow right now. I'm working on two worlds at the same time - one for a friend that I can't show you, and this one, so it may be time to spend a day on the other world today...

[MapMappingMapped]

It's looking nice really - maybe some scattered broken up ice-white islands/giant icebergs in the north of the right hand one? - I've always found those eye-capturing in maps, and they fit right into an arctic climate.
Really interesting to look closely and observe the different climates and how they cross into each other.

[Mouse]

LOL!

I haven't got that far yet. I'm still at the 'get the basic shape and colour scheme right' stage, but I do know what you mean. I still gaze at all those lovely full colour satellite images of the Earth quite often. The colours are just so beautiful.

You would probably like a lot of Arsheesh's work. He does world maps that blow your mind away!

I can't seem to open another window right now to go find a link for you (my system is totally temperamental these days), but I'll be back in a few minutes to update that comment with one

EDIT: link provided to Arsheesh's 'Finished Maps' album. There's all kinds of lovely things in there, but among them you will see worlds that make mine look really quite pathetic. Even so - that's no reason to give up trying

[MapMappingMapped]

This little conversation has just reminded me of an ancient idea which I won't be surprised if it has already been done, but which I am absolutely not willing to do myself! A huge map that can be seen as a planet and twisted around as you will, zoomed in, and as you zoom in, you start to see the forests closer, the hills the mountains, rivers, and... cities. Villages. Roads. Hamlets. Like a combination of thousands of maps. And yeah, sort of like Google Maps. That would be insane work, but the result would be awesome!!

[Mouse]

Well its a very nice dream, and one that I think we all have from time to time - I certainly do, but like I explained to someone else not so very long ago it would take more than a hundred lifetimes to do all the mapping right down to that kind of scale for an entire planet, and some very clever tech stuff to make it work like Google Earth.

The compromise for writers like you and I, who want to also have time to write books now and then, is to do a main map and maybe one or two others to supplement it.

This map of Errispa will end up on my author's webpage (it seems to be unacceptable for an author not to have one these days, though I draw the line at that and refuse to waste half the rest of my life on Twitter and so on). Its the last of the set. I have a map of the twin planet Ethran, the main city on Ethran, and the protagonists home within that city.

There's a classical excuse for only suggesting the basic shape of a fantasy world, and that is its best to let readers fill their own imaginations with the colourful details based on the words you write, rather than spending hours looking at all the graphics you've made, and which in truth are more important as personal writing aids than anything else