(WIP) Attempting to use an 18th century atlas map as a style model

[Pixie]

This is becoming a labor of deep love... I'm loving the style and have been developing the lore of this area, while working on the map, by a great deal. I'll share history later on, once this goes to the gallery of finished maps.

For now, I'm very proud to share the next iteration... many more labels added, internal boundaries within Kane added as well, and a massive cartouche, stolen and adapted from an old atlas. I'm not absolutely sold to the cartouche, it looks a little foreign to the rest of the map, or at least it does now, without a proper border and without insets on the western side of Kane. We'll see about it further down the process.

Other updates/comments:
The coastal waters feature - I haven't been able at all to produce any kind of pattern that wouldn't show repetition, so, for the time being I have a small experiment with handdrawn lines at the area of the Gulfs and at one of the lakes - if labeling is tedious, this is xtra tedious, it's an unbearable job to do with a mouse.

The mountains still need more variation, but I keep skipping from task to task and haven't been at that for quite some time. I've got good sources for it and I know exactly what to do, which is, I think, why I haven't done it yet

There is one spelling mistake and one grammar error in the map, on purpose. I may add one or two more, but I'm sure proof reading had been invented by 1700. If you find more than one of each, then it's my mistake and please let me know.

The larger pieces of text, like the cartouche, are done with individual paths which aren't completely straight. This is done with intention, but... did I overdo it? what do you think of it?



All kind of comments are welcome.
(I will not rant about being a better map maker than any of the prestiged guild members and I will not rant about the lack of comment or lack of quality in the comments, promise...)

[gilgamec]

I like it a lot! It's still looking a little sparse, especially in comparison to the sample Russian map you showed; maybe it needs some symbols for forests, plains, and other geographic features.

Your lettering looks great, even the fonts. Since any map of the time would have been hand-lettered anyway, I think the slight offsets are a good effect.

I think the shading on the seas looks great, but I can imagine it's exceptionally tedious. There's also a problem with the pitch of the hatching; it doesn't match the hatching on the hill icons (well, I assume the shading is hatching; at the resolution you uploaded, it's pretty blurry). This also makes the cartouche stand out; not only is the pitch of the hatching different again, but it's much blacker.

[ChickPea]

I'm not knowledgeable about old maps, but I think you're creating something beautiful here and it looks great to me. The labelling really sells it and you're doing a fantastic job with that.

I'm not 100% sure about the cartouche. It's a lovely piece of art, but it looks a little blurry compared to the rest of the lines on the map.

[Pixie]

Very little work done on this, mainly because I'm a little burn out on names making... There's about 50 rivers and 30 locations to name.

Other than that, the map inself is practically done, all rivers are drawn, and all coloring, borders and symbols is final (apart more variation with the mountains, which is still a task I keep postponing to sometime with more free time).

I'm sharing this version mostly to share my solution with the cartouche and the border (I used part of the cartouche to make the border, which creates some continuity). Your comments, gilgamec and ChickPea, were very useful to me - you were right that the layers (cartouche, writing, mountains, borders, rivers) seemed very different, some were more contrasting, other crisp, some darker, etc... I made adjustments and slight effects to make them more coherent.
I'm happy with it, but what do YOU think?

Now, apart the problem (which time will resolve) of creating around 80 more words (coherent with what's already there), my other problem are the decorative elements still to come. The map layout is screaming for decoration in the bottom left corner (if I could draw, it would be some sort of mythological classical goddess, surrounded by animals, in lavish linework, "overseeing" the might of the Empire...). I also planned for a couple of compass roses.. Those are things to come..

The unresolved problem (the elephant in the room) is the hatching for the coastline, or rather, the absence of it... will deal with it when I find the energy for it.

Current state:

[ascanius]

Hey Pixie. It's looking very nice. One thing you could do for the mountains/hills is take what you have to another file and overaly two together with an offset, erase the lines that don't make sense and make new brushes that way. Or leave what you have already on the map and add parts of other mountains.

One thing I think would add to the lableing is to have the letter color in "An Accurate Map of Kane" match the off grey in the rest of the cartouche, just so they match better.

The empty space in the bottom left, I like the idea of a goddes overlooking the land but I think it would also draw they eye too much to the bottom of the map. It might make the map look bottom heavy or really busy. As a test copy the cartouche and paste it in the bottom left corner and zoom out and I think you'll see what I mean. If you were going to go with the goddess picture I would have it enclosed or be a part of the boarder instead of floating over the map the way the cartouche is now. If I can find time i'll see if I can draw a picture that fits your discription and matches the cartouche, no promises though. In the mean time try a compass and see how it all fits.

Are you going to do this for the rest of the world map you did?

Anyway good luck and nice to see your still at it.

[DanielHasenbos]

Very nice map Pixie! I love the style of it and the overall look of the map and it has a very 'real' touch to it!

I don't really have any feedback to give to you, only that I can't wait to see the final version of it.

The only thing I want to say is that I noticed some typos in the map. Two I saw quickly were 'Land of the North, preiously under rule by Duodyn' where you miss a 'v' in 'previously' and 'Kahan Sand Islets' where the 't' should not be there. I don't want to be a douche but it would be a shame if these minor typos would make it to the final version. There may be more that I just didn't notice but I hope this helps.

-Dan

[Freodin]

The unresolved problem (the elephant in the room) is the hatching for the coastline, or rather, the absence of it... will deal with it when I find the energy for it.

I have worked - on and off - on the same problem for quite some time now. I think I have almost nailed it now... of course there is always room for a little tweaking.

Do you think this might work for you?

[Pixie]

Thank you for the comments, ascanius, DanielHasenbos and Freodin.

@ascanius:
I will try to tune the color of the title in the cartouche. I am using the same color in all the lettering, but you are right, it looks darker in large fonts and it's a fix that sounds both easy and powerful.
And no, a whole world map using this scale isn't feasible... It was only a "let's see what I can do" sort of thing. I've got plenty of maps in my mind using different epoch styles (which will "eventually" get done) but for now this is going to be one of a kind.

@Daniel:
That typo in "preiously" was left on purpose, actually, it's one of two. However, looking at it with some weeks of distance from when I wrote it, the wording of that sentence looks terribly modern to me now. I will probably redo the whole sentence. If you can throw any suggestions (basically, the sentence needs to say that the Empire took a bite of the original land of the Duodyn King).
As for islets, that's on purpose. Islets stand for small islands, be it rocky, sandy or coraline. That area is supposed to be a maze of fossilized sand bars, hence, islets.

@Freodin:
That's exactly what I am trying to achieve! If you would be so kind to share the technique...
Furthermore, you've picked a real world location (SW Portugal) that I love and where I worked for a number of years - kuddos for the happy coincidence!

[Jayharchitect]

Looking good Pixie, I'm excited to see what the hatching at the shores does.

One minor thing (maybe because I am coming from an architecture / site planning background) ... I keep reading your borders between regions as roads. Or maybe they are roads and they just happen to go through every mountain? Other than that, looking good!

[Freodin]

That's exactly what I am trying to achieve! If you would be so kind to share the technique...

Certainly!
There are some other ways to achive a similar effect for coastal lines: here is a thread about it, and you can find several other methods linked in this thread in the post#9.

But these methods are rightfully called "woodcut effect"... too blocky for the much finer lines of the copperplate engravings that we are trying to go for here.

To get these finer, yet irregular lines, I used a variant of my usual "hatchings" method, that I developed for striped patterns. The task is to produce a good hatching-pattern... the rest is basic.
The solution to this problem, or so I think, is to create a basic pattern... and then scale it down.

So I started with an imagesize of 500x1000 white background. I filled it with a pattern of horizontal black stripes - 3px tall black stripes to 5px tall white. (In the posted image, I also used a method to randomly distribute 2black-6white and 3black-5white, to add some variation to line thickness... took me a while to figure that one out, hah!)

- To add the irregularites, I used a Filter:Noise - spread with x 0 and y 3. Then I blurred it with a Motion Blur: linear, length 10, angle 10.
- For some further irregularities, I added a white layer on top of that, layer mode set to "disolve" and opacity to 20. That adds some white specs to the whole.
I created a layer "New from visible" to be able to blur that slightly... in this case, a gaussian blur, x 3 and y 0.
- Now, I scaled that layer in the y-direction to 45%.
- To further hide the digital origin of that pattern, I rotated it, just so slightly, with Layer/Transform/Arbitrary Rotation. Something between 1° and 3° is fine.
- This now is the pattern for the coastal lines. You can either place it directly as a multiply-layer between your sea-texture and landmass, and use a layermask to define where it shows, or clone it in on a such a layer. Manual work, but that would definitly not discourage you, would it?
- You can then play with the contrast/brightness or curves to your heart's delight, to adjust the overall blackness to your map.
- Finally, I tried to blend the lines in a little better. I darkened the pattern where it was nearest by the coast - just paintbrushed over it with a soft black brush, set to "darken only", opacity 10%... and in the same way lightened up the other ends: white brush, "lighten only", 10% opacity. Do both until you are satisfied with the look. (I am still looking for a way to automate that step!)
You can of course use adjustment layers, if you don't want to change the hatching pattern.

That's it. The way to tweak this style is via the initial line setup. By changing what proportions of black to white lines you use, how much "spread" to use, and how much to scale it down you can get lines of almost any thickness and density that you want.