How do you handle elevated areas in maps?
My world doesn't have many mountain ranges in a way that's easy to draw. Rather, the whole center of the continent is raised like one big mountain island.^1^
I'm drawing a map of an area about 200x219 km, to give an idea of the scale i'm working with, ranging in height from sea level to about 50km above that.
Single mountains or mountain ranges like the ones in the maps in The Lord of the Rings aren't too hard, but when one side of a mountain covers the entire map i don't know how to show that.
A map of Oz on Wikipedia has little hair-like lines to show elevation at Happy Valley (bottom left). Is there any other strategy for showing height differences on this scale?
^1^ This is because instead of tectonic plates, it has something like geophysical cooling that forms mountains. I won't get into that just now.
10 replies
Topo lines.
I'd do the topographic lines but add a bunch of them really close, as distance between lines denotes a steep change in elevation. You could also add numbers on each side
This is a good reference for general rules of topography: https://www.sciencing.com/topographic-map-rules-6875833, and this is a more in-depth explanation of how frequent the lines are (contour interval) in Swiss-made maps: https://www.swisstopo.admin.ch/en/contour-lines. They are less frequent in steep terrain and small-scaled maps because it would otherwise be too noisy.
Thanks, that's very helpful.
From what I can recall of my middle school science class, the lines on a topographic map connect points of equal height. Putting lines close together denotes a steeper slope. To denote a drop in elevation you use hatch marks.
This is what i didn't understand when i asked. Those lines are at regular vertical intervals, so when they're close together that means the ground is rising thru those vertical levels over a short horizontal distance. Steep ground.
From a quick look at elevation maps, your options seem to be colors and/or lines. So, not a bundle of options.
As an alternative, maybe a light shading based on elevation? I'm not sure if that would look good or not though...
Does it have to be from volcanism? Couldn't it just be magic fatasss demon crashed made a mountain?
It's not from either of those. Imagine a hard ball wrapped in cloth in space. Now imagine the center shrinks but the cloth doesn't, so it buches up and wrinkles. Those wrinkles are landmasses.
If that's too easy, imagine the same thing but inside-out and you'll be closer to how it actually works.
I had to rub one out at big balls