Map of the Day 17: The Western Hemisphere

You've all been very patient.  It's the weekend, so here it is, as promised: Calidar's western hemisphere.

Calidar's Western Hemisphere, Equirectangular Projection

I included the Great Caldera, which bisects the two hemispheres.  Its central location means it's difficult to split the world map in two without cutting it in half.  Note where the prime meridian runs through the Great Caldera: in Ellyrium, the Byzantine-like country to the west of Meryath.

There are lots of new names here to digest.  Eerien was introduced last weekend, and revisited in my summary post yesterday.  Omfall we visited this week, but it's worth going back and comparing its shape to the shape featured on this map – the Equirectangular Projection world map here significantly deforms the true shape of the continent, whereas the Stereographic Projection used in the Omfall post largely preserves its true shape.

The two as-yet unmentioned small island continents are the Isle of Obb in Calidar's far west, separated from Eerien by a narrow channel; and Lanmarroth, which is the largest island in a chain known as the Furyan Archipelago, curving from Omfall down to Mormoroth in the extreme south.  Lanmarroth is a mountainous land which separates the Sea of Aelghin from the vast Vengrim Ocean.

Going back to Omfall, the Taslan Peninsula straddling the equator points to the east, towards the Arm of Ule, which is the westernmost promontory of a super-continent in Calidar's eastern hemisphere.  In fact, Ule is one of three major regions/subcontinents in this one huge landmass.  Like earth, Calidar has more land in its northern hemisphere than in its southern.

This brings us to the end of this part of the Calidar World Tour, as well as the third week of Map of the Day.  It has been a fun ride for me, and I have really enjoyed sharing some of the things I've been working on so hard for the past six months.  Thanks for reading!

What started out as posting one map each day has grown to become a full article with multiple images each day, which is not really sustainable, especially while at the same time working on the most important and most enjoyable cartography project of my life so far.  I really need to give it my all, and there is an awful lot still to do.  I'm going to continue posting new maps to this blog – there is lots still to share on the journey to the publication and poster maps.   But I have decided to slow down a little, to allow me more time to concentrate once more on what matters most: making beautiful maps for you all to enjoy.

I promise to post at least one new article each week, and when I have time I will post more.

Map of the Day 14: Mormoroth

Welcome to the third week of daily Calidar maps.  This week we continue our world tour, with a new continent each day – beginning with the south polar continent of Mormoroth.

Mormoroth, 3D view of Eroded Height Map, Polar Stereographic Projection

First Draft, Polar Stereographic

Second Draft, Polar Stereographic

As I have mentioned in previous posts, the polar areas can be the most problematic for any world builder.  This is because it is easy to draw onto a rectangular world map – which of course warps the poles more and more until the top and bottom lines of the map represent the points of the poles.

First Draft, Equirectangular

Second Draft, Equirectangular

Calidar was no different, and the polar regions caused so much trouble that at one point we considered simply having no land in these regions of the map at all.  However, in the end we used map projections to solve the problem.  The result is the design you see on the left.

The small strip below each Polar Stereographic map is the bottom strip of the Equirectangular world map, from 90ºS to 60ºS.  In other words each of the above pairs of images displays the same area.  Note how the first draft coastline design looks smooth on the Equirectangular map, and yet hideously spiked on the Polar Stereographic map.

What I did was to redraw the coastline on the Polar Stereographic map, resulting in the second draft image on the right.  Then I reprojected the new design back to Equirectangular, and slotted it in to the world map – as you will see perhaps next week.

Mountain Design
Polar Stereographic Projection
(Cropped for erosion)

With the projection issues sorted, I'm sure you all know by now what came next: mountain designs, followed by erosion.  After Bruce gave me the okay on the new coastlines, I had to adapt the mountain design to it, then work on the height map.

The funny thing about Mormoroth is that since it lies at the south pole, most of the height map design will not be visible on any map – it will all be buried in a massive ice sheet, with only the highest mountains sticking out the top.

Undaunted by this, I went ahead and developed the area anyway.  I have yet to work out how to implement the ice sheet itself...  In the meantime, here are some views of the eroded height map – a peek beneath the ice sheet, if you like.

Join me again tomorrow as we journey north again to one of Calidar's undiscovered continents.