About
Welcome!
This website is intended to be a record of all my explorations into reconstructing hypothetical worlds and working on paleomap projects. For now, this will take the form of a series of updates into whatever projects I currently have underway, although some of these updates may get organised into coherent tutorials at a later date.
Projects
Most of the projects here will have a mapping focus, but there may be detours into linguistics, biospheres, history, and so on as well. These projects will, for the most part, be in service to creating a complete world. Smaller projects might be dedicated to testing ideas, commission work, or investigating parts of Earth's history - natural and human.
The main project will have some key areas:
- Tectonics and the physical planet
- Astronomy
- Biosphere, including the emergence of humans
- Linguistics
- Human activity
I have listed tectonics first because that is what I am working on at the time of this post. I intend to spend a good deal of this project, especially early on, working entirely on maps, because they will be needed for every subsequent part of the project. I am currently working on a complete tectonic history of the world, and will follow this with physiographic maps of the modern world. Each of these key areas will of course have multiple subtopics - the 'physical planet' for instance will encompass geography, oceanography, hydrology, climate...
A separate project area will be paleogeography, although of course a similar mapping approach will prevail. The difference here is that the data will already exist, and I will be applying some level of artistic interpretation to work others have done on revealing Earth's deep past.
Methods & Influences
All speculative projects here will take a 'realism-based' approach to everything they cover, but ultimately this is an artistic endeavor. For one, there will always be more reading I could do into any given topic, and I could always generate ever higher resolutions of details and data. But I have also, with some regularity, run up against the limits of present scientific certainty in any given field. Much of the time, 'feels right' is going to be the totality of justification for any given choice - and it will always be operative in some degree. Worlds are complex, interacting, and ever-changing objects, and it is unlikely any given principle or mathematical formula will capture the entire truth of even one aspect of them. With that said, the intention will always be towards fidelity, according with the observations we have about Earth, and exploring the possibilities the constraints of nature - as we understand them - allow us.
I will be using techniques that I have been developing for quite some time, which I hope can be used by others to increase the fidelity of their own reconstructed worlds, or otherwise admired for their artistic results. These techniques are nothing more than trial and error in most cases - I have found that iterating continuously on any given technique until it matches a desired output has produced methods far better than anything I could have thought up in the moment. I have also found it useful to spend time with the visual elements of subjects I am trying to recreate. Getting a feel for things as they actually appear is indispensable: the way the folds of the Appalachians sweep through eastern America on Google Earth gives a sense of the way the Earth moves in a way mechanistic explanations of continental collision could not without overwhelming granularity. But I have also been guilty of trying to draw complete explanations for things from the visual elements alone. Ultimately, the plain information of a subject cannot be circumscribed if our aim is realism. Here, I have various websites and publications to thank, but a good deal of credit also needs to go to those who have embarked on similar projects of creating worlds and sharing them. Not only has their subject knowledge been immensely helpful, but also their recommendations on resources and tools. I likely would never have been able to start down this path without Worldbuilding Pasta's introduction to tectonics and GPlates. Artifexian's current CRETAK project on their YouTube channel has been an awesome resource, and an exhaustive look at mapping entire planets. Madeleine James Writes has probably the most developed project and philosophy I have seen from any worldbuilder, with truly impressive depth on a huge range of topics. And Biblaridion, who has single-handedly changed the way I conceive of constructed languages and, in Alien Biospheres, given the space its best performing YouTube series on top of that.
Site Format
The two primary types of articles you'll find on this site are 'posts' and 'updates'. Posts will be reserved for longer discussions, especially on general subjects, project overviews, tutorials, and real-world investigations. Updates will generally be project specific, and will involve shorter articles on project progress, follow-ups, and corrections.
Posts will have a more formal structure, with multiple sections, and will hopefully be reasonably comprehensive ('all the information in one place' would be ideal). Updates will be less organised, and most of the time are likely to be essentially multi-media log reports.
Please feel free to comment and check out my links on other sites. Any support you can give is much appreciated.
Updates
12.06.2025 | There is currently no general page for site navigation or site information, so this Updates section will provide a running feed for site information until further notice.
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I hope I can contribute even just a little bit of what other creators have given to this pursuit - which may not be as niche as one might assume. I see a general appetite for sensible lore and realistic worlds in even some of the largest fandoms around. There seems to be a remarkably strong community around this corner of the internet. Anyway, that will do for an introduction - more updates to follow!
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