February Entry: Era of the Three Kingdoms

[jfrazierjr]

Thanks jfrazierjr,

Do you have to have one of the following?:

Flags, crests, banners or coats of arms.

I sort of took the point of 'political identifiers' and went with a symbol that represents each empire. I couldn't find anything along the lines of 'Flags, crests, banners or coats of arms' but assumed that these symbols are identifiable with each empire.

It would be a damn shame if I can't enter this competition with the map the way it is

I don't have anything handy, but you could make up some simple flags... most flags in the world are some simple combination of stripes of some sort on a rectangle. You can get as creative and detailed as you want based on the description. Alternately, if the symbol is not so much a translation of the name (as I originally thought), just put the symbol onto some type of banner or flag shape and your done.

For example, You could create a square flag for each, and place the symbol somewhere onto the flag(in the center or whatever). Or you could say have one with a circle, star, etc in one corner and the symbol in the center.

Here is a super quick example made in GIMP in about 5 minutes (yea.. its a bit "bright", so sue me) I used the Elliptical and Rectangle selection tools, bucket fill tool, and Text tool and created a path of the text layer duplication and filled with black and blurred the black layer to get a "shadow". Total 6 layers:

• Background (red)
• Yellow (Transparent layer with Rectangle selection half the size of the original starting at 0,0 filled with color)
• "Dots" Layer( two selections 100x100 offset from the side and offset so they cover half of yellow/red horizontally and filled with blue
• Text layer (can be deleted later) and use the text along path tool to create a path once it's centered where I wanted in the image.
• Select the path in the Paths dialog and "Path to Selection"
• New layer, fill with brown. Duplicate layer with selection still around the brown.
• Fill the new layer with black, turn off the selection and Gaussian Blur the layer.
• Move below the Brown version of the text.

If using GIMP or PS, the selection tools have options for you to tell it the size in both directions as well as the starting x and y location, so you do the math the get it centered.