A map to accompany a story

[ravells]

Midgard: No, the symbols actually come from a font, but as I'm at the office I can't look it up here. I'll tell you the name when I get home although I can't remember where I got the font from. I find that symbol fonts are a real underused resource in maps. As they are vector based you can expand them all you like. The navigaion lines are called Rhumb Lines. If you wiki them, you 'll get more info on them.

Gameprinter: I should go through the map and deal with the pixellations, but I was too lazy! Interestingly, the forest pixellation didn't come from the auto-trace, but the bitmap mask I used which was 512 x 512 - I guess I should have used more resolution. I tend to draw my maps over an A4 size document which I think is a mistake, as although this doesn't affect the vector part of Drawplus, the bitmaps look pixellated over large shapes.

Valarian: Sorry I didn't mean to imply that all maps drawn by authors are awful. The Hilderbrant brothers (although they were more artists than authors) produced beauties and I've seen a few that I really like - that Paravia map is beauty, very evocative. That said there are a lot which are really pretty bad.

I think one of the restrictions one has to work within is that the map will be printed in black and white on at best two facing pages of a paperback. This map is already looking like it has too many colours in it to be printed in a mass produced cheap paperback. I believe (maybe gameprinter can help here) that putting in one monochromatic colour would still be possible without pushing the cost of the book unduly high. This was why initially I started by just using a pallette of black and green, but more an more colours snuck in.

Ravs

[Valarian]

I think one of the restrictions one has to work within is that the map will be printed in black and white on at best two facing pages of a paperback. This map is already looking like it has too many colours in it to be printed in a mass produced cheap paperback. I believe (maybe gameprinter can help here) that putting in one monochromatic colour would still be possible without pushing the cost of the book unduly high. This was why initially I started by just using a pallette of black and green, but more an more colours snuck in.

I've just done a quick greyscale conversion of the second image and it looked fine. I wouldn't have thought there'd be a problem with printing a colour inset for the map. The colours would probably have to be on the Pantone palette to print well.

[landorl]

I love the map, but I too have to say that the "squareness" of the forest edges are a bit distracting. Still, I like the subdued colors and the style that you have chosen. I think that it works well.

[ravells]

Here is the next iteration. I've changed the forest fill to a more 'tree top' type rather than static. and I hope I've got rid of the pixellations in the fill. I've also changed the mountain fill to a different seamless tile....but I don't think it really works (I've kept all the old fill styles on Kesh for comparison).

Dunno...what do you lot think? I seem to spend the majority (at least 80%) of my time making and trying different styles rather than drawing the dang map.

edit: added a second one with borders.

[pyrandon]

I think this is much, much better! The trees are far more pleasing to the eye.

The mountains work, I think, except the fading, which is more distracting than anything else, IMO.

Nice work!

[Midgardsormr]

Dunno...what do you lot think? I seem to spend the majority (at least 80%) of my time making and trying different styles rather than drawing the dang map.

Well, the map itself is the easy part, right?

The forests appear to have some depth, but the mountains don't. Partly due, I think, to the drop shadow on the forest borders.

This map is looking very attractive. Keep it up!

edit: oh yes, and I like the forests very much. Precisely the style I was looking for a few weeks ago.

[Valarian]

I'm afraid I still prefer the second map of the last set. I don't think either of the newer ones improves on that one. The mountains on these ones don't work for me at all, the just don't say "mountain" to me at all. The forests also look higher than the mountain terrain where they meet. I also like the variegated ground cover on the map 2 of the previous set.

[ravells]

I'm inclined to agree with you Ian, although the tree fill I think is a slight improvement. I had a think about the variegated ground cover and although it looked prettier than just having one level of variegation, I thought it didn't really give any information about the land. I'm going to play with a variegation which involves farmers' fields and hedgerows and other types of ground use elements, so at least the texture has a meaning.

I'm going to ditch those mountains. In fact, I'm going to ditch the idea of using a seamless fill for mountains (they never seem to look right) and build up a series of hand drawn Erwin Raisz type mountain symbols. I think that even if I lose the feathering on the current seamless fill and put in a drop shadow, they'll still look manky. Using hand drawin individiaul symbols will also solve the problem about what to do where forest and mountain meet. As you say, Ian, the forest appears to float over the mountains using individual symbols I can have the mountain tops peeking out of the forest. In a way I wonder whether having one obvious hand drawn element in the map (like the mountains) will make the others seem more hand drawn? Worth a try.

Brian: I'll post up the seamless tile fill for the forest in in the mapping elements section of the site a little later.

Thanks chaps!