unexplored Lands

[kacey]

Thanks John and Selden! You guy's have given me more information then I can handle, so much so that I haven't had much time to work on the actual map.

So I've decided to take you're advice Selden and back off a little, and now I'm just focusing on learning about tectonics, and trying to get the coasts in place which is not a small job. I've started to gain some rhythm jumping between Equirectangular, Robinson, and the Winkle Triple projections to even out the distortion and then periodically checking it on a 3D globe, though all the back and forth has changed the coasts drastically and I'm still just working with basic forms for now until I can get to a compromise that I can deal with in regards to distortion.

I hope to get an update up soon, but I'd like to get a little further ahead before I do that.

[kacey]

I've decided to scrap the way I was doing things. Trying to get clean "real world style" coasts and worrying constantly about weather or not my land masses would work on a globe at the poles became really draining and time consuming and was making me completely miserable. I really wasn't having fun anymore, and started to resent the project so I had a little hissy fit and scribbled all over it...

I'm much happier now and I'm finally starting to get some land masses that I like even though they may not be realistic or scientifically sound. It's just way more fun doing it this way. I might even do it in a hand drawn or painterly style. I'm still going to try and make a height map, I'll just have to see how many times I want to throw my computer at the wall trying to figure out how before I totally give up on my original idea.

I'm just trying to clean things up now, I'll have to go over these lines again at least one more time to get a decent land and sea mask but overall I'm much happier with the way things are going.

[Voolf]

I have no clue what is "cross-blended hypsometric shaded relief", but the coastlines look pretty awesome already.

[Caenwyr]

I have no clue what is "cross-blended hypsometric shaded relief", but the coastlines look pretty awesome already.

I concur! Doing that realistic style is a pain in the butt, and the best result you can ever hope to achieve is something that looks a lot like maps everyone has already seen before - after all that's the whole point. In this new style, however, I very much like your land shapes, AND I think the brush strokes look lovely and of a completely effortless beauty. As in all types of art, making it look simple while it's actually very hard is the true indication of skill.

And those little brush strokes do exactly that. You're making me jealous, just with those strokes! That's awesome!

[kacey]

I have no clue what is "cross-blended hypsometric shaded relief", but the coastlines look pretty awesome already.

Thanks Voolf, you can see an example of what I was aiming for in post #5 on the first page of this thread. I actually used this map of earth to create this map https://cartographersguild.com/album...chmentid=94065 by cutting and pasting parts of the earth map and setting the blend mode to linear burn over a texture background. I really like the colours it gives this way and was hoping to use my world map to do the same for regional maps of this world.

I concur! Doing that realistic style is a pain in the butt, and the best result you can ever hope to achieve is something that looks a lot like maps everyone has already seen before - after all that's the whole point. In this new style, however, I very much like your land shapes, AND I think the brush strokes look lovely and of a completely effortless beauty. As in all types of art, making it look simple while it's actually very hard is the true indication of skill.

And those little brush strokes do exactly that. You're making me jealous, just with those strokes! That's awesome!

Thanks Caenwyr, what a nice comment! Though I will need to clean away all those little strokes for the final coast I may still use them for a hand drawn style just for fun.

[Voolf]

That is awesome Kacey. I am going to look more closely to this thread. How will you make the relief, draw yourself or use some software to generate it?

[Chashio]

Glad you are having more fun now. I've done the same thing before, many times.
I love your sketchy line work coasts and land shapes.

[kacey]

That is awesome Kacey. I am going to look more closely to this thread. How will you make the relief, draw yourself or use some software to generate it?

Thanks Voolf... I'm not entirely sure how I'll do the relief, I imagine it will be allot of trial and error on this one, and I'm really hoping to get some help from the experts here at the guild. I've been going over a couple of tutorials I found by Arsheesh, Pixie, and a2area that seem useful so I'll probably try to mix a few of the techniques from them... I'll definitely be making a grey scale height map though which is a little daunting since I don't really know what I'm doing.

I have a few ideas in mind and have done a couple of small tests using Wilbur with good results, but my surface doesn't like doing the rivers for some reason, I keep getting a little window saying Wilbur is not responding. When I do a smaller size image it does work though so I'm chalking that up to a lack of computing power so I'm not too worried since I just got my new desktop put together this weekend and it's running really well. I'm still waiting on my cooling system though, apparently it's somewhere in Germany right now, but I got impatient and installed the one from my old computer and it seems to be doing the job. I'm not going to push it too far just yet though because the plate isn't quite big enough to cover the entire processor, and I'm so paranoid about over heating the CPU that I'm constantly checking the temperatures which seem to be holding steady at around 57 degrees. Chances are I'll just be finishing up the coast by the time the new one gets here I haven't had much time to work on maps lately.

Glad you are having more fun now. I've done the same thing before, many times.
I love your sketchy line work coasts and land shapes.

Thanks Chashio! I appreciate the kind words, and thanks for the nice rep comment too.

[Voolf]

and I'm so paranoid about over heating the CPU that I'm constantly checking the temperatures which seem to be holding steady at around 57 degrees. Chances are I'll just be finishing up the coast by the time the new one gets here I haven't had much time to work on maps lately.

57 degrees is save temperature. When i am playing PC games my cpu and gpu temps go above 80 degrees and i am using my pc for more than 3 years already without a problem . I did clean it once though because of dust i had 90+ stress temps haha

[kacey]

57 degrees is save temperature. When i am playing PC games my cpu and gpu temps go above 80 degrees and i am using my pc for more than 3 years already without a problem . I did clean it once though because of dust i had 90+ stress temps haha

This makes me feel a little better about it, and I asked my fiancée what temperatures he was getting on the gpu when he was running his games and it hasn't gone above 30 so I think I can relax a little now... It's just too bad that my monitor had to go and die last night.