It is a pleasure to announce a new personal project that I will be working on for the next couple of months, called the Youtubia project. The project will combine a mixture of general work on the landmass, as well as some city map designs for cities on the continent. In this post, I will be focusing on the general properties that will underpin the design choices for the landmass in general.
For the first few parts of this series, and for the design phases of city map projects, I will be hand-drawing the landmass features and street plans on a sketchbook, before moving on to the digital graphics design of the map.
So, where does Youtubia take its name?
The name for the Youtubia continent takes its inspirations after I have been regularly watching YouTube content creators of varying subscriber sizes (ahem the example about beauty and wellness content creators in the second blog post ahem), and I imagined to myself, what if these subscriber numbers were modelled to create large cities out of them?
Therefore, the Youtubia project is designed to combine my love of open-world driving games with my love for curiosity by designing a map that simulates "travelling" around different content creators on YouTube who make videos in a wide range of genres, from entertainment and travel, to fashion/beauty and computing, as well as video games. And everything in between.
General landmass properties
The Youtubia landmass is slightly larger than Australia in size, spanning approximately 3,000 miles (4,800km) from east to west at its widest point, as well as approximately 1,800 miles (3,000km) north to south.
The terrain of the continent is varied with predominantly rolling farmland plains on the northern and eastern sides, tropical forests in the south and the south-east and a large desert located in the south-west of the continent. On the northern coast, the terrain is generally very rugged in a similar way to the Scottish Highlands, with a few island archipelagos located at various points along the coast.
There is also some mountainous terrain in the east of the continent, with the Western Range (named after its location relevant to two provinces on the east coast) containing mountains up to 2,000 metres (6,600 feet) high.
The landmass also has a few large rivers, however these are not illustrated here due to the grand scale of the map, and will be the subject of a separate blog post.
Visual representation of the climate zones of the continent. In this drawing, lines represent mountain ranges, while a darker green tone represents places with tropical climates and orange/yellow shades represent places with desert climates.
Population distribution and naming conventions
The naming convention for cities on the continent is applied on a case-by-case basis, with some city names being directly taken from the original name of the channel, and others being renamed to include "town" and "city" suffixes, in order to maintain realistic naming standards for such places.
The populations of cities on the continent are taken from the subscriber counts of the content creator. Each province on the continent will have a wide variety of both large and small content creators being represented as cities and towns on the map.
The east and the south-east of the continent are the most developed parts in terms of population density and connectivity with other cities, with cities further west being more vastly separated from each other. The south-west of the continent, with it mostly containing deserts, is the most sparsely populated part of the continent, with very long distances between major cities.
Defining the general climate of each region of the continent
Throughout the continent, winter temperatures are generally mild and snow is rarely experienced at low levels, with the only places on the continent that regularly receive snow being on the mountain tops and in the high altitude valley regions of the Western Range.
Below is a breakdown of typical average daytime temperatures and seasonal rain patterns for each region:
The south-west: The climate of the south-west of the continent is modelled on the climate of north-western Australia. With the south-west generally consisting of dry deserts, the weather can get very hot over the summer months, with average high temperatures in July exceeding 40°C (104°F), and night time temperatures exceeding 25°C (77°F). Winter temperatures in the south-west are also warm, with daytime temperatures averaging between 22 (72°F) and 26°C (79°F) in January.
The south-east: The south-east of the continent is divided into two distinct weather zones. North of the south-eastern peninsula, the climate is generally hot and humid during the summer, along with mild to warm winters, averaging 14 to 19 degrees (57 to 66°F) in January and 30 to 32 degrees (86 to 90°F) during the hottest month of July.
Moving further south, the south-eastern peninsula generally experiences a tropical climate, with winter daytime temperatures averaging 22 to 24°C (72 to 75°F) in January and 33°C (92°F) in July. It is also one of the wettest regions on the continent, with average rainfall figures hovering around 1.5 to 2 metres per year.
The east coast: The climate on the east coast is transitional from the hot and wet climates experienced in the south-east of the region, to a milder maritime climate in the north of the region. Summer daytime temperatures range from 24°C (75°F) in the northern parts of the region to 32°C (90°F) in the south, while winters are very mild, with daytime temperatures typically averaging from 9 to 14°C (48 to 57°F).
The west coast: Located north of the south-western deserts, the west coast generally experiences hot summer weather, with average daytime temperatures ranging between 28 and 33°C (82 to 92°F), as well as winter temperatures of approximately 11 to 15°C (51 to 60°F). The region generally experiences drier weather during the summer months.
Centre: With the central region being situated west of the Western Range mountains, the climate is transitional between the wetter, coastal climates experienced on the east coast and the more hotter and drier climates of the west of the continent.
The north-east: The north-east is one of the mildest climate regions on the continent and bears the most similarity to the UK, with average temperatures of 20 to 23°C (68 to 73°F) during the summer months, and winter daytime temperatures averaging between 7 to 9°C (45 to 48°F).
The north-west: With the climate being influenced by the south-western desert, particularly further south in the region, the north-west generally experiences drier and warmer weather during the summer months, with average temperatures between 22 and 25°C (72 to 77°F) depending on location. Winter daytime temperatures average between 9 and 12°C (49 to 54°F).
What's next in the pipeline?
The continent is divided into 16 different "provinces", which work in a similar way to real-world countries in that each province has a capital city. Due to the amount of detail that is going to be involved in breaking the provinces down, this subject will be the focus of part 2 of this series.
And here is what's to come next...
Until next time,
Jakub
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