January Entry: The Lost Continent

[Steel General]

I'll echo myself from post #21...

This looks really nice Bryguy...great job!

[Karro]

It looks pretty darn good. The only comment I have, and I know this would be hard to do, is that for a an old book just laying open, the lines of the map and the text are awfully straight. It looks like if I hold a ruler up to the computer screen, the text and other lines will line right up. This makes it look not so much like it's following the curve of the page.

I'm not sure how I'd do it, myself (I think there are some hints on it in RobA's GIMP tutorial on how to do distortion, if you're using GIMP) but it looks like they could use some kind of distortion.

You mention that it doesn't look right if you flatten it. Are you flattening in the right order? If you flatten your layers in the wrong order, you lose some effects, but in the right order and everything is preserved. IIRC, you have to flatten from top to bottom.

[bryguy]

It looks pretty darn good. The only comment I have, and I know this would be hard to do, is that for a an old book just laying open, the lines of the map and the text are awfully straight. It looks like if I hold a ruler up to the computer screen, the text and other lines will line right up. This makes it look not so much like it's following the curve of the page.

I'm not sure how I'd do it, myself (I think there are some hints on it in RobA's GIMP tutorial on how to do distortion, if you're using GIMP) but it looks like they could use some kind of distortion.

You mention that it doesn't look right if you flatten it. Are you flattening in the right order? If you flatten your layers in the wrong order, you lose some effects, but in the right order and everything is preserved. IIRC, you have to flatten from top to bottom.

Yea I know it is awfully straight. Im trying to think of a good way to fix it. For the text, I might just make a path and set the text to path, but the image is harder, as it doesnt look very good when I do it....

I think I gave the wrong impression, what I meant was what I have to do to get it to a size this site will accept is to save it as a .png, and then open the .png in GIMP and scale it down to 1000x1000. This last time I did it I used the wrong type of scaling (I have been using cubic scaling, as when making images smaller it keeps all the detail) so it ended up slightly blurry at parts.

Thanks for the comments Karro

[jfrazierjr]

Personally, I would go with one of the runic looking fonts, with hard sharp angles and no curves. Rune is one I kind of like. Of course.... if you really wanna go overboard, perhaps you could do it in binary or mathematical language other than Base10 for the "letters".

[Karro]

Yea I know it is awfully straight. Im trying to think of a good way to fix it. For the text, I might just make a path and set the text to path, but the image is harder, as it doesnt look very good when I do it....

I think I gave the wrong impression, what I meant was what I have to do to get it to a size this site will accept is to save it as a .png, and then open the .png in GIMP and scale it down to 1000x1000. This last time I did it I used the wrong type of scaling (I have been using cubic scaling, as when making images smaller it keeps all the detail) so it ended up slightly blurry at parts.

Thanks for the comments Karro

Hmm. Not experienced enough with GIMP to know how to handle this.

No prob on the comments. Your's is easily in my top 5 for this month!

[bryguy]

@--> Jfrazierjr

Yea Im thinking I might go with something like that, probably The Alphabet of the Magi or Tengwar Noldor.

@--> Karro

Yea trying out the text to path, it keeps messing up my computer, so I dont think that will work. Ill probably have to import parts of it into Inkscape to get the curves on the stuff, if I can find it/remember how to use it


And Im glad Ill be on someones top 5

[RobA]

Try this as a displacement map on the page:


(You will have to scale it to cover the text and image)

Set it to y only, and as large as you want.

-Rob A>

[Ascension]

Alphabet of the Magi is one of my all time favorites for rune looking things that don't look like Norse or Ultima. I used it in my entry on the CWBP in the frame. Elven Common Speak is also one I use a heckuva lot cuz it looks so spidery. The pages kick butt now, good job.

[bryguy]

@--> RobA

How do I set it as a displacement map? Ive never done displacement maps before....


@--> Ascension


Yea trying it out on the map it looks sweeeeeeeeeet

Although it causes me to need to alter some things with the text to make room for it, but I think it looks sw(e to the 10 power)t

[jfrazierjr]

@--> RobA

How do I set it as a displacement map? Ive never done displacement maps before....

Filters->Map->Displace. Then choose the layer with the image Rob provided.