As a very nerdy worldbuilder, finding these has been very interesting! I knew a lot, but having it all in condensed places (like your written articles) and these videos are really excellent and easy-access reference materials. It was a long time since I did extensive world simulation (Since I often see it more as simulating what kind of world it would become, than creating it per se..) but now I have gotten started again, and this has been a staple source of refreshing my memory and adding new things. :)
@@madelinejameswrites Artifaxian is the reason I want more on plate tectonics. He shows how useful they are, but I wanted more on how they work than he provided. Definitely a great resource.
Just finished this first video and this is exactly what I've been looking for. I see you just posted a new video within the last 24 hours, I can't wait to catch up!
To get the landmass size in the 20-50% range, may I suggest using A4 for the initial Super Continent, and then A3 paper for the world map? That will automatically make the continent within the desired range.
A few years ago i started creating a series of rules to simulate plate tectonics on a Dymaxion projection using DnD dice to randomize it. I'm excited to follow along your process and see if i can adapt your rules into mine.
This is exactly the level of detail I crave 😂 Plus those hot spots are perfect for my magic system, which along other things uses energy from heat and motion to power spells and magical workings! Continents/island nations with more of them have am advantage in terms of access to power.
Oh that's really cool! The hot spots are pretty easy to throw in there where you need them, so that's convenient too! Your magic system sounds really cool - I love when worldbuilding affects magic systems 😍
You say that divergent oceanic mountain ranges do nothing, but like, Iceland was formed because of that. It does need to also be on a volcanic hotspot, but it feels like that would have been worth mentioning
@@madelinejameswrites Well not entirely I guess. It's more like volcanic hotspots super change when they're on divergent continental plates, which makes big islands in the ocean
very interesting video, and aweseome to see that there are multiple parts! I have a map I've been working on for 10 years that I've always wanted to give the "realistic" treatment at least when it comes to climate. I have my landmasses and mountains etc already, but I want the deserts, warm regions etc to make sense! Maybe it won't totally make sense when you look at plate-tectonics etc, but in the end, it's made up anyways :) Cheers and thanks for making an awesome series of videos! Edit: Man will it ever be complicated to add all of this to an existing map xD ouch.
Thank you! And yes, I've retrofitted a number of maps to this system and it can definitely be tricky! If you can get the plate boundaries working for your various landforms you will be golden! If you want a quick tip, only worry about the boundaries on land since you already have your land masses and mountains and all that. Don't worry about making the entire globe work unless you want to. I think in the mapping section I list what features you'll have in different places. If you care about earthquakes, knowing where your transform boundaries are will help, otherwise you don't really need those. So you can add oceanic-continental convergent boundaries where you have mountains along coasts, continental-continental convergent boundaries where mountains are not at coasts, and divergent where you have land splitting apart. If you aren't wanting to change your landmasses, this is sufficient. And honestly, if you don't care about rocks/minerals/volcanos and don't want to tweak landmasses, you can probably skip this step entirely.
@@madelinejameswrites Thanks for a great and detailed reply! :D It would be fun to see you comment on people's maps in a video some time. Like a kinda "tips and tricks" type of video. Cheers!
I think you make really good content, I wish more people knew your channel! ❤️ Idk if you're into tiktok or not, but I'm sure uploading clips or abridged versions of your videos there, and telling people they can find the full deep-dive versions on your UA-cam channel, would bring a lot of people here! (I say this because it's waaay easier to get your content to new people on tiktok than on UA-cam) Anyway no matter what I'm sure your channel will keep growing! 🌟
Thank you! I'd love to figure out how to post clips on TikTok, I need to put some time into figuring out how to do it, it's so different from making UA-cam videos 😵💫
Came here from Artifexian. The "island method", while fun and creative, falls into the exact trap he mentions about polar distotion. I can do the same in Photoshop and it would produce the same result. You can only work with distotions if you do it in 3D. I subscribed anyway, tbh.
Yeah, it absolutely does. It's something I've been thinking about lately actually because I just started working on a new world for my next project. I tried to adjust the landmasses to account for distortion myself once I knew where I wanted them, but it definitely wasn't precise. I'm hoping to find a way to do it that doesn't involve using too much software, because I like doing it all by hand if I can. Or maybe this is one step that really needs to be done on a 3D globe in software and then exported...
@@madelinejameswrites might be expensive, but the one method I can imagine is having one big metal ball (not too big of course), and using little magnets to pin the island fragments and continents to the ball, which would function as your table. This accounts for everything distortion-wise (because there would be none as you're using a sphere already). The trick is getting the paper equivalent for the sphere, that you can draw on. This might involve more arts and crafts where you create these paper shells for your metal sphere, or if you can find spherical paper shells, get a metal ball that fits their size. Personally I'd just use software because I like doing everything digitally already, but I can deeply appreciate it being done traditionally, and I think it would be cool.
@@madelinejameswrites might be expensive, but the one method I can imagine is having one big metal ball (not too big of course), and using little magnets to pin the island fragments and continents to the ball, which would function as your table. This accounts for everything distortion-wise (because there would be none as you're using a sphere already). The trick is getting the paper equivalent for the sphere, that you can draw on. This might involve more arts and crafts where you create these paper shells for your metal sphere, or if you can find spherical paper shells, get a metal ball that fits their size. Personally I'd just use software because I like doing everything digitally already, but I can deeply appreciate it being done traditionally, and I think it would be cool.
@@zee_space_wolfy that is a really interesting idea... It would definitely be fun having a physical globe like that too. It would be easy to move plates around too for figuring out the paths of your plate movements. I'm going to need to figure out something similar to this to try out.... Thank you for the idea!
I just have a question, the small islands as result of hotspots, aren't they supposed to get smaller the more away they are in direction of which the plate is moving? Since the most recent spot would be the furthest away in opposit direcrion of which the plate is moving, recent formed islands by hotspots are most likely to be bigger.
So if the plate is moving due East, there would be a trail of hotspots from the location of the hotspot trailing towards the East. And the largest ones would be the most recent ones like you said, so the Western most ones. Does that make sense?
Wow, I was not expecting this level of detail. That is truly astounding. I will be creating my version this weekend! I can't wait to see what comes next! I'm really interested in how rivers, lakes, and other such bodies of water are developed in this methodology. The interesting part of all this is that you can use some of this to develop cultural histories for the peoples of this newly created world, like all the flood myths spread throughout the cultures of Earth. Will you be talking about that in this guide as well? (Granted that is tangential to the actual worldbuilding, but could be an interesting video topic.) Although, I'm thinking this level of work would warrant a more centralized work for this world. Like this is the world where an EPIC fantasy would take place. Or do you think creating worlds like this would be feasible for single standalone books?
Yes!! So once we have the full map, I'll definitely have a whole video or two on water and watersheds both at the global and regional level. I want to talk alot about how the world impacts culture and society. Like if you look at the civilizations that sprang up around stable vs unstable rivers with flooding you see huge correlations between the nature of the gods they worship. I think it's fascinating.
And this guide will work for epic or more condense stories. It's all about what you spend time on. Like if you know the story is in one area you can really avoid spending a lot of time on other areas, but it all still plays a part! Especially when we get later into the series you can pick and choose a lot
Here from Artifexian. Looking forward to binging this series!!!!
Edit: Okay this shit fucking rules.
☺️ thank you!
As a very nerdy worldbuilder, finding these has been very interesting! I knew a lot, but having it all in condensed places (like your written articles) and these videos are really excellent and easy-access reference materials. It was a long time since I did extensive world simulation (Since I often see it more as simulating what kind of world it would become, than creating it per se..) but now I have gotten started again, and this has been a staple source of refreshing my memory and adding new things. :)
Thank you! Condensing all my research into one place has been really helpful for my worldbuilding process and I'm glad you're enjoying it too!
Thank you so much. I have been trying to find someone who goes in depth on plate tectonics for making my own story world map, so this is super useful.
Thank you! I definitely also recommend Artifaxens channel!
@@madelinejameswrites Artifaxian is the reason I want more on plate tectonics. He shows how useful they are, but I wanted more on how they work than he provided. Definitely a great resource.
I love how much passion is behind this. I am going to binge this.
This is such a massive resource, exactly what I was looking for! 😁
I'm so glad it's helpful!
Just finished this first video and this is exactly what I've been looking for. I see you just posted a new video within the last 24 hours, I can't wait to catch up!
So happy you're enjoying the series! It's been a lot of fun to make.
This was awesome! Thank you so much for sharing... can't wait to try this method of map making!
I love your detail.x
Thank you!!!
Thank you ! I want to create another continent for Earth in my story, so this is the best way to make something realistic
Hope it helps! If you haven't already, you should look up Zealandia!
To get the landmass size in the 20-50% range, may I suggest using A4 for the initial Super Continent, and then A3 paper for the world map? That will automatically make the continent within the desired range.
That's a great idea!
came in wanting to learn how to world build, ended up learning a whole bachelor degree's worth of geology. incredible
A few years ago i started creating a series of rules to simulate plate tectonics on a Dymaxion projection using DnD dice to randomize it. I'm excited to follow along your process and see if i can adapt your rules into mine.
That sounds like a lot of fun! Hope this guide can help in some way!
This is exactly the level of detail I crave 😂
Plus those hot spots are perfect for my magic system, which along other things uses energy from heat and motion to power spells and magical workings! Continents/island nations with more of them have am advantage in terms of access to power.
Oh that's really cool! The hot spots are pretty easy to throw in there where you need them, so that's convenient too! Your magic system sounds really cool - I love when worldbuilding affects magic systems 😍
You say that divergent oceanic mountain ranges do nothing, but like, Iceland was formed because of that. It does need to also be on a volcanic hotspot, but it feels like that would have been worth mentioning
Is that definitely different from a volcanic hot spot island? I can do some looking into it.
@@madelinejameswrites Well not entirely I guess. It's more like volcanic hotspots super change when they're on divergent continental plates, which makes big islands in the ocean
very interesting video, and aweseome to see that there are multiple parts! I have a map I've been working on for 10 years that I've always wanted to give the "realistic" treatment at least when it comes to climate. I have my landmasses and mountains etc already, but I want the deserts, warm regions etc to make sense! Maybe it won't totally make sense when you look at plate-tectonics etc, but in the end, it's made up anyways :)
Cheers and thanks for making an awesome series of videos!
Edit: Man will it ever be complicated to add all of this to an existing map xD ouch.
Thank you! And yes, I've retrofitted a number of maps to this system and it can definitely be tricky! If you can get the plate boundaries working for your various landforms you will be golden! If you want a quick tip, only worry about the boundaries on land since you already have your land masses and mountains and all that. Don't worry about making the entire globe work unless you want to. I think in the mapping section I list what features you'll have in different places. If you care about earthquakes, knowing where your transform boundaries are will help, otherwise you don't really need those. So you can add oceanic-continental convergent boundaries where you have mountains along coasts, continental-continental convergent boundaries where mountains are not at coasts, and divergent where you have land splitting apart. If you aren't wanting to change your landmasses, this is sufficient. And honestly, if you don't care about rocks/minerals/volcanos and don't want to tweak landmasses, you can probably skip this step entirely.
@@madelinejameswrites Thanks for a great and detailed reply! :D It would be fun to see you comment on people's maps in a video some time. Like a kinda "tips and tricks" type of video. Cheers!
Nice video. This is the kind of depth that I need in my role-playing worlds. Thank you!
Thank you and I'm glad you like it! It's definitely a lot more than most people need, but I love how it all comes together when you go this deep
I think you make really good content, I wish more people knew your channel! ❤️ Idk if you're into tiktok or not, but I'm sure uploading clips or abridged versions of your videos there, and telling people they can find the full deep-dive versions on your UA-cam channel, would bring a lot of people here! (I say this because it's waaay easier to get your content to new people on tiktok than on UA-cam)
Anyway no matter what I'm sure your channel will keep growing! 🌟
Thank you! I'd love to figure out how to post clips on TikTok, I need to put some time into figuring out how to do it, it's so different from making UA-cam videos 😵💫
Watch the next part, Glaciation and Physiographic Regions, here: ua-cam.com/video/Gxwzxu2_Wmw/v-deo.html
Great Video
Came here from Artifexian. The "island method", while fun and creative, falls into the exact trap he mentions about polar distotion. I can do the same in Photoshop and it would produce the same result. You can only work with distotions if you do it in 3D.
I subscribed anyway, tbh.
Yeah, it absolutely does. It's something I've been thinking about lately actually because I just started working on a new world for my next project. I tried to adjust the landmasses to account for distortion myself once I knew where I wanted them, but it definitely wasn't precise. I'm hoping to find a way to do it that doesn't involve using too much software, because I like doing it all by hand if I can.
Or maybe this is one step that really needs to be done on a 3D globe in software and then exported...
@@madelinejameswrites might be expensive, but the one method I can imagine is having one big metal ball (not too big of course), and using little magnets to pin the island fragments and continents to the ball, which would function as your table. This accounts for everything distortion-wise (because there would be none as you're using a sphere already).
The trick is getting the paper equivalent for the sphere, that you can draw on. This might involve more arts and crafts where you create these paper shells for your metal sphere, or if you can find spherical paper shells, get a metal ball that fits their size.
Personally I'd just use software because I like doing everything digitally already, but I can deeply appreciate it being done traditionally, and I think it would be cool.
@@madelinejameswrites might be expensive, but the one method I can imagine is having one big metal ball (not too big of course), and using little magnets to pin the island fragments and continents to the ball, which would function as your table. This accounts for everything distortion-wise (because there would be none as you're using a sphere already).
The trick is getting the paper equivalent for the sphere, that you can draw on. This might involve more arts and crafts where you create these paper shells for your metal sphere, or if you can find spherical paper shells, get a metal ball that fits their size.
Personally I'd just use software because I like doing everything digitally already, but I can deeply appreciate it being done traditionally, and I think it would be cool.
@@zee_space_wolfy that is a really interesting idea... It would definitely be fun having a physical globe like that too. It would be easy to move plates around too for figuring out the paths of your plate movements. I'm going to need to figure out something similar to this to try out.... Thank you for the idea!
Thank you so much for this!
Great video, what is the device you are using? Is it a graphics tablet or just a light board?
Just a light board n
I just have a question, the small islands as result of hotspots, aren't they supposed to get smaller the more away they are in direction of which the plate is moving? Since the most recent spot would be the furthest away in opposit direcrion of which the plate is moving, recent formed islands by hotspots are most likely to be bigger.
So if the plate is moving due East, there would be a trail of hotspots from the location of the hotspot trailing towards the East. And the largest ones would be the most recent ones like you said, so the Western most ones. Does that make sense?
@@madelinejameswrites thats correct, really this is stuff that is easier to explain by drawing or an animation than with words haha.
Wow, I was not expecting this level of detail. That is truly astounding. I will be creating my version this weekend! I can't wait to see what comes next! I'm really interested in how rivers, lakes, and other such bodies of water are developed in this methodology. The interesting part of all this is that you can use some of this to develop cultural histories for the peoples of this newly created world, like all the flood myths spread throughout the cultures of Earth. Will you be talking about that in this guide as well? (Granted that is tangential to the actual worldbuilding, but could be an interesting video topic.)
Although, I'm thinking this level of work would warrant a more centralized work for this world. Like this is the world where an EPIC fantasy would take place. Or do you think creating worlds like this would be feasible for single standalone books?
And I just found my island!
Yes!! So once we have the full map, I'll definitely have a whole video or two on water and watersheds both at the global and regional level. I want to talk alot about how the world impacts culture and society. Like if you look at the civilizations that sprang up around stable vs unstable rivers with flooding you see huge correlations between the nature of the gods they worship. I think it's fascinating.
And this guide will work for epic or more condense stories. It's all about what you spend time on. Like if you know the story is in one area you can really avoid spending a lot of time on other areas, but it all still plays a part! Especially when we get later into the series you can pick and choose a lot
Hello, i have a question, what might a hotspot do for stationary (all sides divergent) plate? Could such plate go underwater
Another question is a hot spot on the edge between plates.
I would expect you'd just get one big volcanic area. I don't think the plate would go underwater, depending on what type of crust you have.
whats the name of the music you used when you were drawing the map outline
I believe that is As History Unfolds - Christoffer Moe Ditlevsen. I get all the music from Epidemic Sound.
“Don’t disconnect oceans,” meanwhile One Piece: “…”
😂