Thread: Kurvantium - An island map

I'm not sure what it is about your map, Jaxilon, but it kinda reminds me of the feel of the animation from the movie Wizards. There was some juxtaposition of animation and live action in the film. The more I look at your map the more the juxtaposition of your trees against the rest of your island, especially the mountains and icons, grows on me. I think you may have actually stumbled upon a style of art here that has it's niche.

Ok, I have gone to a smoother style of water. I changed the forests to a more even green color to see if that made it any better for folks. I like it but then I liked the last ones as well. I might fiddle around with Gimp a bit more to see what else I can coerce out of the software. I added some labels (I'm not overly confident of my abilities on this so any advice is welcome). I did them all at an angle and while I could put more labels for mountains and so on I'm wondering if I should do each label on it's own curve?

I added a scale on the shaft of the spear.

@ProfGremlin - I had never heard of that movie before. I tried watching it but the narrators voice was hard to take. I did like some of the artwork in the backgrounds though, that was pretty cool.

I think that's it for this update.

Kudos to you for trying to watch Wizards It's certainly not everyone's cup of tea, and I find the animation style to be annoying (anything by Bakshi is annoying to me, but I at least try to give things like that a chance.. TitanAE, Heavy Metal, and so on.. I dunno.) Personal opinions about that style of movie aside, I see where the comment comes from, and I agree, it does have that kind of Bakshi-esque feel to it. And the more I think about it and look at it, the less the forests bother me.

I did have an observation, the cloudiness along the curvature looks the same as the cloudiness along the bottom portion of the map with less curvature.. perhaps a bit of perspective to the effect to it's a bit more stretched width-wise along the top? I don't know if it's absolutely necessary, but it's one of those things that once I see it, I can't un-see it

I love that movie, but I agree that the animation style (rotoscopic, or something like that) can be a bit annoying.

I remember renting Wizards out on VHS many years ago. I remember it being a very strange movie with a main character who looked like something out of sub-disney with a giant nose and then these rotoscoped things that looked totally at odds with other character designs. And also the fairy thing was showing nipples? I remember not liking the film very much but I did think the ending was quite cool.

I had an English instructor back in high school who was a little left of center. He had us watch both Wizards and Pink Floyd's The Wall and then based writing assignments off of them. I can't say I would have watched either one myself but at least it was a novel way to engage the class, "Kick back and watch a video? Sure, no prob."

Jaxilon, the forests look a bit more integrated at this point so I think your choice helped. As for the labels, I'm not sure there's necessarily a problem with them but I'd be curious to see them presented more in alignment with the plane of the page itself, i.e. in a vertical manner, than with the shaft of the spear.

Jax - Maybe it's just me, but it seems like your work has gone to a whole new level recently. I am working on this one map now and this is just the kind of style I'd like to do for it but cannot. Very nice!

The thing I thought was funny about "Wizards" was that the horses looked like Hoppity Horses with 2 legs, or as I always called them Hippity-Hops. This should bring some memories back for a few of us older folk. I don't think they actually had the horse when I wanted one of these.

@Coyotemax - Not sure what I can do about that, I wonder if that's the one thing going on here that slightly bothers me? I'm not entirely happy with they way things "fit" into the picture. It's like I don't like the square of the frame or something. I'm pretty happy with how this turned out especially since I had no real hopes for anything, but maybe you put your finger on it. There is a little blurring towards the horizon but I never did anything like that along the bottom of the page. Maybe I should have less curve on the horizon...

@Ramah - you are totally right, they had this Betty Boop type fairy wearing some kind of negligee that showed some anatomy. In her defense she was only a half fairy, LOL.

@PG - Do you mean horizontal or vertical? You said vertical I know but do you mean straight up and down? I'm thinking of doing the area labels in a curved manner to help with the shape of the overall piece, at least that's what's cooking in my head atm. That might help. I'll play around with it I guess.

@RE - Thanks very much for the complement. If I had to give a reason for improvement I would probably say it's from doing more drawing by hand, a decent scanner, and getting a regular workflow. Also, it helps knowing my way around Gimp. I really should try a tutorial since the first time I got so lost I couldn't complete it (that might bring hope to those of you out there who feel unable to get the results you want, keep at it!). There are still a number things I don't understand but they are dwindling. My hope is to have everything work seamlessly from drawing to labels. I'm getting closer to bringing the visions in my mind to the digital page and that's a lot of fun.

Jaxilon, I think we're using different words for the same meaning. To me, from the perspective of your map, horizontal would be laying the label flat on the land so the letters are laying on their backs, as it were, and vertical would be standing the letters up on their feet. It's an odd nomenclature, I know. Your idea to curve the labels to assist in the overall perception of the piece has merit.