So question, how would one go about making a map for a fictional planet? What would be a good way to start off? I've tried making planet maps before, but they've never turned out well or completed.
Alternate Planets, Suns, Stars, and Solar Systems Thread
- Thread starter Pragmatic Progressive
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Seconding @Altaic, if you want/need real deep detail then start with GPlates and model plate tectonics. Look up Artifexian on YouTube, he's currently doing a decent series of videos on using GPlates for the plates then Illustrator to paint the map on top of the plates. He goes into good detail about why features appear where they do.
I think even if you're a person who doesn't want to go to that level of detail, then it's still worth a good watch to understand why the Earth looks like it does, which would then help you to design something that feels more realistic than your earlier iterations.
One other suggestion I heard that predates computers, much less GPlates, is to simulate tectonic activity by getting a sheet of something that will shatter if you drop it on a hard surface. A thin sheet of candle wax, or a large, thin bar of chocolate, or a piece of water icing (just icing sugar and water) (e.g. here, as it's often hard to translate the term accurately) that was just spread out on a baking sheet to set. The idea is, you take something whole and let it shatter, then you get a lot of edges that were once whole, like a tectonic fault. Then shuffle the bigger pieces around to open up some expansion zones, butt some edges together to denote subduction zones, take a photo looking straight down onto the mess you made and use that as a template to draw your continents. Don't trace around everything directly, just let the bigger pieces inspire you for where your major coastlines go. Much less precise than GPlates, but much faster.