New Style WIP - Victorian

[tilt]

Very nice map you got going there... looking forward to seing it finished... agree with the others about the hatching...

I never even knew an 'expand appearance' tool existed.

Don't think I could live without expand appearance.. I use it all the time ... also use Psdtuts alot

Nice title you've made HRob, good work all over

[ravells]

Ah my mistake, I thought that expand appearance was a ps tool, but it's used in AI. No wonder I hadn't seen it before!

[tilt]

*lol*.. no, not if you don't use AI

[HandsomeRob]

Did a little more work tonight. I like these fonts a bit better, and I've taken most of the advice I've received so far.

Now I think it's just a matter of filling in detail for the rest of the map.

-Rob

[RecklessEnthusiasm]

HandsomeRob - I have to give recognition where it is due: you are one talented guy! This is a neat new style, and I look forward to seeing how it grows and changes. Keep up the good work.

[ravells]

Looking great Rob! The only thing I'm a little confused about is whether the large mass of forest is on a hill or in a valley. As I understand it the convention for the slope style you are using is that the points of the spikes point down the slope which suggest that the forest is in a valley, but a number of rivers seem to eminate from there which suggests that it is high ground.

best

Ravs

[HandsomeRob]

Looking great Rob! The only thing I'm a little confused about is whether the large mass of forest is on a hill or in a valley. As I understand it the convention for the slope style you are using is that the points of the spikes point down the slope which suggest that the forest is in a valley, but a number of rivers seem to eminate from there which suggests that it is high ground.

best

Ravs

Hmm, I didn't know that. I assumed that the points pointed uphill. I'll have to get them turned around. I think I should space them out a bit more as well. The slopestyle is the one aspect of this map that I'm not really satisfied with yet. I might need to come up with a different way of representing relief.

I'm going for something similar to the attached, but not so "smudgy."



Thanks,
-Rob

[ravells]

Oh crumbs, I'm begining to doubt myself now....I can't remember where I read or heard about the convention...the lines are called hachures. Click the link for the wiki entries and the 'rules' for using them, but these are just lines rather than little triangles. Ah wow...I've found something really cool; a diagram of hachures and (phew) as you can see, the apexes of the triangles are pointing downhill. I found it here which is a pretty cool site on archeological mapping (we need more of that on this guild).

HRob, when I use linestyles in Drawplus to draw hachures and they point the wrong way, there is a command to 'reverse curve' which gets them pointing the other way - I assume you've done them in illustrator so it will have a similar command.

If you are using Illustrator you could make a linestyle (or whatever AI calls symbols along a line) of just plain lines and you can widen or narrow the spacing fairly easily to follow the rules.

[alizarine]

Awesome map. Looks like a map my family owns, actually. Same style, with the "highlighter" borders and contour markings. Giant map of parts of Washington state and Canada, so it's a bit bigger than what you're going for, but you're really getting the "feel" brilliantly. The map of England you're using as 'reference' is a bit smudgy compared to the one we've got, so not-smudgy is still quite accurate ^.^ I wonder if the contour (hachure) lines point downhill on the one we've got? It'd be interesting to see if there was some sort of standard for that kind of thing.

- Alizarine

[HandsomeRob]

I've decided to zoom out and get a world map together first, just so I have a better idea of how everything fits together.
This is still just a WIP, but I've filled in enough of it that I can show you the whole thing. The region shown in the prior attachments is part of the east-central coast of Barlovia (which is in the center of the southern hemisphere).