Milky Way Galaxy, Revisited

[rdanhenry]

Spaceships.

[mearrin69]

This looks very cool! I notice two "New California" systems on there. Was that intentional? I can certainly see how it might happen during an expansion push. Edit: if not intentional and you want them to be different you could make one "Nuevo California" and call it a day.

BTW, thanks for the link to the original map. I grabbed the images for my future projects folder.
M

[bartmoss]

rdanhenry, I am afraid my graphics skills are not sufficient to draw nice spaceships.

Mearrin, good catch - that duplicate New California was not intentional although I am sure in a Galactic Empire such duplicates will occur. I have a list of, hm, about 350 colony names so I'll just pick something else, or maybe I'll name it "New Francisco" or something

[Coyotemax]

Where is that quote from, from the first post? i like it.

[bartmoss]

Thanks for the suggestions, guys. I went with flags/seals. I've also added some more star systems to the map itself.

[bartmoss]

Thank you - It wasn't that hard really. The map is basically an inverted and tweaked version of the NASA Milky Way drawing: http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/image...-the-Milky-Way

It's not just a negative though, that would make the spiral arms too thin.

Next, I had to clear up some gunk that was left; there were areas that were too grey, and in the centers of the arms were areas that were too white. Used cloning a lot to fill in gaps.

After that, I resized the image - blew it up to huge proportions, and used a variety of filters to remove the blockiness from the map.

I'm sorry I can't give a very detailed list of what to do, as I didn't take notes.

But if I can do it, anybody can. I am hardly a gimp-expert.

All the lines, text, systems and so on, were then added with Inkscape.

[moriturimax]

Drooled over your map again. Only got one thing to say, Preseus Arm?

Heh, lovely map, I decided to go with the Pinwheel Galaxy as my base. I think I used that in my original work, dug up my old stuff from around 2000. Set up some galleries at Alternitechnity.

Its a work in progress, just got it started couple days ago, Graphics Galleries should be up, I hope to redo the stuff there with much much better quality, ugg. Once I do I might even be brave enough to post something here.

[bartmoss]

Thanks - typos do happen. i am sure at some point I will spot one on the A1 poster of my current map

Just took a really quick look at your gallery, you certainly do not need MY advice on drawing, nice stuff!

If you are interested though, I wouldn't mind releasing the basic gray galaxy image as cc-by. Hvae to run to work now but I'll upload it later.

[bartmoss]

I've released the base image under the Creative Commons Attribution license: http://enderra.com/2012/02/01/milky-galaxy-black-white/

Enjoy!