WIP - Morac

[kimni]

I haven't had time to work on a map for a while, but now I finally managed to get something done again...
So, this is my current project. It's a map to this year's NaNoWriMo-attempt (which sadly failed three thousand words before the finish line). It's the third version of this world (the first version's setting was modern age, the second classic medieval-fantasy, and this one is more steampunk/sort-of Victorian age).

I originally planned caterpillar mountains, but after several attempts I got frustrated and decided to try something else. I'm pretty happy with how that turned out, and now I think I'm finally starting to learn how Wilbur works.

What I'm not so sure about is the borders, especially the smaller ones. At the moment they're red because when they were black, they looked like rivers. I'm not happy with the red, though, because it doesn't really fit the rest of the map, so any suggestions would be great.
There's also some lable placement that is less than ideal, but there just doesn't seem to be enough room for them...

I'm also not sure what to put in the bottom left. At the moment I can't decide between a world map (with the different countries' colonies, but for that I'd have to do some serious worldbuilding first) or some statistics and background info about the countries.

Any feedback or suggestions would be very welcome.

[kimni]

I decided to go with a world map for the open space for now. I've never really tried to do a world map, so I ran into the issue of map projection. I read some basics, and looked at a few Victorian era world maps, and as far as I can tell, those seem to be in Mercator projection, so that's what I was going for. I know very little about map projections, so I have no idea if this looks right...
I also never tried to add ship routes to a map, so I'm not sure if they make sense. I just tried to connect all the countries with their colonies.
Also, since I ran into that issue... is there any way to convert a map into a different projection?

[Pixie]

Projection concerned, I would advise you to work on a version in equiretangular projection, and a very large file. But only for the line work on landshapes and geographical markers (rivers, ridges, mountains), and keep those markers on separate layers.

Then, whenever you want to make an actual map - I mean, with coloring, labels, and so forth - you take that file and plug it on G.Projector. And there you choose your projection and output it into a new file. In fact, output a version with clean landshapes, one with clean landshapes plus a graticule and a third with all your markers.

Turn those three files onto a three-layers file. That is your actual starting point for a map... from there you can retrace and do all sorts of cartographical neat stuff!

[AzurePlanet]

Hi kimni, welcome to the Guild!
You're doing a great work, I like it very much!
As regards the Mercator Projection I agree with Pixie: when working at planetary scale is always a good idea to deal with Equirectangular Projection (No Projection, actually).
By the way, looking at your world image, I assumed you drew grid lines at 15° intervals either latitude and longitude, then I reprojected it to equirectangular just to see if your grid ovelaps mine.

Latitude matches perfectly, while longitude is shifted by a fixed amount. Since you can choose your prime meridian as you prefer, I may say that your grid is a correct Mercator projection.
As regards ship routes drawn in Mercator projection, they should be straight lines wherever possible, in fact the purpose of that projection is just to draw routes as straight lines (rhumb lines).
As regards boundaries, I would make them just a bit thicker and transparent brownish, but these are just personal tastes...

[kimni]

Thanks for the tips, Pixie and AzurePlanet. G.Projector is pretty much exactly what I was looking for...

I went back and redid the coastlines (and changed some of them) and the ship routes and added some labels.
For now I'm happy with the world map, so I'll go back to the actual map and try to figure out what to do with the borders.

[kimni]

This is probably as far as I'll be able to finish this map for the moment, since this semester's exam season is about to start, so I probably won't manage to do much in the next few weeks.
There's still some things I'm not quite happy with (the labels aren't very legible in some places, the texts are mostly placeholders describing what is in the maps anyway, and I'm not sure if I should keep the flags in at all), but on the whole I think it turned out pretty well.

[AzurePlanet]

Oh, I like a lot your current result!
Due to the map key and other information, I guess you've made up a very detailed world.
Also, I'm keen on flags, so no doubt about it: I'd keep them in for sure. By the way, just a little question about that weird yellowish colour for the flags: is that intentional?

[kimni]

Thanks!
There are a lot of details in the map, but most of them have very little actual worldbuilding behind them. For now they're just blank slates with names, and I'll fill in more details and worldbuilding if I have time for it.
I'm not sure what you mean about yellow for the flags? A lot of them have yellow because one of the major religions on Antaria is centered around the sun, so they like having yellow everywhere to symbolize the sun. Like crosses in European heraldry (and flags).