Substantial postings about constructed languages and constructed worlds in general. Good place to mention your own or evaluate someone else's. Put quick questions in C&C Quickies instead.
This is my first attempt at turning a photograph of a pattern into a map:
Map-base03sm.png (43.07 KiB) Viewed 1666 times
Would this work as a realistic map? Or does it still look like the rusty surface with peeling paint I used as a base?
EDIT: Forgot to say, this is not a whole conworld (probably obvious if one looks at the map borders), not even a continent, but only a large archipelago. And of course, this is only the first step, I still have to add elevations, rivers, etc. Maybe I should delete some islets?
Benturi, I think my answer to whether it's realistic depends in large part on the scale you're assuming. Basically, the smaller all those islets are, the more realistic it seems to me, just because there are so many of them.
Given the right scale and geological surroundings, it looks fairly realistic. I'd personally still remove a few of the smallest islets though, and I'd also suggest turning some of the larger lakes into bays by connecting them to the sea.
You haven't even said what latitude your island is at. If it is tropical, then the prevailing winds are likely to come from a different direction than if it is temperate. Not to mention we don't know things such as scale, the height of the mountains, ocean currents etc.
Thanks for your suggestions. I was thinking of something definitely larger than the Åland Islands, at least the size of the Philippines. I wouldn't mind placing it in a high latitude, recently de-glaciated area if I use it for my own conworld, but I have proposed this map, or the map this could become, for a collaborative project, so let's see. In any case, I guess I'll have to remove more than a few islets.
@Linguist Wannabe: Yeah, as I said, I wanted to know first if the general shape of the landmasses, bays and lakes, and also the high number of islets, looked realistic at least somewhere and at some scale (though I did mention that I wanted this to be a large archipelago), or what should I change to make it realistic. Adding heights, rivers and deciding all those other things would come later depending on feedback.
