A friend of mine created something similar using a numerical optimization based approach to minimize distortion. He also made the artistic choice to split the water between Australia and Asia to get even lower distortion. See Elastic II here: https://kunimune.blog/2023/12/29/introducing-the-elastic-pro...
Elastic II is very neat by preserving drainage basins. But Antarctica looks really distorted, in a way that doesn't seem necessary? Could that be fixed somehow?