I always love the green phosphor look.
“Maps encourage boldness. They're like cryptic love letters. They make anything seem possible.”
-Mark Jenkins
Griffon
Thank you! I'm working up a map of Griffon, the closest planet to the Alpha star now. I'm having a little difficulty with the composition, though. Bearing in mind that there will be a data block beneath the map title in the upper left and I want to keep all of my type in the title safe area, what needs to happen with these insets to make it work? Grids aren't working due to the circular nature of the chart. Or maybe it's fine and I've just been staring at it too long?
Bryan Ray, visual effects artist
http://www.bryanray.name
I decided the grid approach didn't look too bad after all. So I locked down the layout, finished the labeling, and statted the planet. I've also put a sort of digital block texture over the background. I'm not sure how well I like it, but I thought I should get reactions before I decide whether or not to keep it.
Bryan Ray, visual effects artist
http://www.bryanray.name
I don't know if you've seen the z animation tech brushes, but they may be perfect for the tech eyecandy stuff for this map: http://z-design.deviantart.com/
I had not! Thanks much, ravs! I'll look them over, and if there's something cool I like, you'll probably see it or something like it in the next map.
Bryan Ray, visual effects artist
http://www.bryanray.name
I think if I put some kind of consoles or other gewgaws, then I'm going to want them to mean something and not just be decoration. I may design something similar for future maps, but at the moment, I just need to crank a few out in a hurry, so I'm going to stick with my current template and not worry overmuch about layout. So here are two more. I'm a little unhappy with the Touchdown chart, as it has a lot of negative space that isn't doing anything for the map. I think I'll eventually want to move the text blocks around to put some weight in the upper half of the image. As I said, though, I need to bang a few out in a hurry for next week's session.
Bryan Ray, visual effects artist
http://www.bryanray.name
More maps! The lack of snazziness on the Iroquois map is deliberate. I decided to leave it off to see how much difference it makes when I display it on the HDTV.
Bryan Ray, visual effects artist
http://www.bryanray.name
Well, my template for these maps got lost in my recent hard drive crash, so I'll probably be changing up the style. This one is more diagram than anything else because the Firefrost system is enormous: a trinary system with somewhere around 50 planets, many of them with their own moons, four asteroid belts, and plenty of space stations. There will be one art board per star, and a fourth to depict important stations and carry the legend.
I am still a little uncertain about the layout. It's difficult to fit so many objects into a 1920 x 1080 space, but I'm concerned that the vertical depiction of the inner planets conflates them with the vertical depictions of the belts and the outer planets' moons. Plus, I really need a different way of showing which objects are sharing an orbit (asteroid belts and the binary pair / Nori) as opposed to being satellites. I'll probably do something with color. I'll also be color-coding which planets are inhabited.
Bryan Ray, visual effects artist
http://www.bryanray.name
It looks cool - but it's really hard to understand.
Orbital distance from primary should be a one-dimensional thing, but you have two lines radiating outwards from Firefrost I.
Also, how do planet Nori and Firefrost II + III share an orbit? That seems unlikely. Of course if Firefrost II+III are a distant binary companion, then they can have their own planets (and the second diagram seems to indicate as much).
If FFII+FFIII are close companions to each other (and I don't see how they could not be) then shouldn't the planets in the 2nd diagram all orbit both of them, not just Firefrost II?
- Nils
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I think it's a lot more intuitive than a lot of historical maps. I think a experience with a layout like this and it'd become automatic to interpret. Now, if didn't have labels like "inner planets", "inner belt" to help me get started, I think it might have been a lot harder to figure out. Since the actual bodies are in constant relative motion, no fixed scheme of positions is going to help with actual navigation, so as a human-usable map to get a quick overview of a system, this is a rather good idea. Color could be providing more information, though. At least knowing gas giants versus rocky planets would nice. Possibly another color or marker for any actually habitable world.
I have to agree that putting stars and a planet into the same orbit is going to be tricky.
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