May/June Lite Entry: Devil's Head (Working Title)

[Immolate]

Another update. I have placed all of the cities and towns and labeled them. That took longer than I anticipated as I had to come up with a lot of names. It doesn't seem like that many places when you're dropping the symbols.

The symbols themselves are pretty straight-forward brushes, 11x11 pixels.

As with most things, this is my first time placing settlements, my first time naming them and my first time choosing fonts, sizes, placements, colors and effects. Advice is welcome.

[Immolate]

It has been a frustrating but instructional day. As you can see, I have added a frame and a nameplate to my map. It is all quite fancy, like a gift given to someone of royal blood.

The frame's genesis was from Lileya, a Romanian brush-maker (lileya.deviantart.com) that I'm sure some of you are familiar with. It was a brush, so I had to hack it to get it to fit around my map, which was a beast.

To my surprise, the name plate was extremely difficult. The only tutorial I could find on the technique was a video, and the instructor didn't bother to explain a few things and the colors were off. I think I got it fixed, but my wife went off to bed a while ago and I'm pretty much guessing at this point. If it's wrong, I'll fix it tomorrow.

The font was from dafont.com, Chopin Script Font. Very elegant and it looked like the kind of font someone would stamp into a brass name plate.

[ravells]

Great work, Imm. I particularly like the symbols you have made for the towns, cities, castles etc. I do find labelling easier on a vector package where you can get all the labels on one layer and adjust them independently. The frame and border are really beautiful too - perhaps a little drop shadow from the frame to suggest that it's standing proud of the border? With the border it looks like you've got white as your highlight colour on the bevel - try using the colour picker and choosing the light purple colour on the border it will make the bevel look less harsh.

Presumably a scale and compass rose are coming soon?

Beautiful work and well done!

[Immolate]

Thank you Ravells for the praise and criticism. I find it amusing that sometimes the things that take the least effort can have great impact. I addressed some of the issues you pointed out on the frame and plaque, I hope sufficiently. A lot of what you pointed out I saw as soon as I looked at it without the 2am filter on my eyes.

I do plan on a compass, scale and cartouche before I'm done.

[msa]

This map is beautiful. I really like the pattern in the frame and the vibrant colors. I feel like mine looks a little washed out in comparison, which I'll have to fix a bit. Also, I think your forest pattern is really slick.

My one feedback on the new version of the frame--right now it looks like the map is floating above the frame (to me). Which may be what you want. But in the other version the mix of light and dark highlights made it look like it was set back into the frame (even though I think it looked a tad off that both horizontal edges were dark and the vertical edges were light).

[ravells]

I can see what msa is saying, when I said drop shadow on the frame, I meant the outer frame not the fabric border (sorry, should have been clearer).

I know the 2 am filter well. Oft has been the time when I've done something late and thought it looked brilliant and then looked at it the next morning and seen the warts. Toning down the saturation and brightness on the brass plaque has really improved it.

Regarding the 'least effort - most reward' equation, it's so true. They say that the last 10% of a drawing takes 50% of your time, and I totally agree with that.

Great map! No more crits from me.

[Immolate]

More significant update this time. There are one or two more features I'm considering adding to the map, but functionally, it is complete pending final critique.

The compass began with a design by midnightlynx (midnightlynx.deviantart.com). His adaptation of a classic design was clean and strong. The enameled emblem in the center that looks like it came from the third reich is from the font "Devils and Dragons" which can be found at http://www.dafont.com/theme.php?cat=707&page=3.

The cartouche came from a simply gorgeous seventeenth-century Scottish example kept in superb condition, but which nevertheless required a big chunk of time to clean up and adapt to my purposes. I think it turned out well, but if anyone can come up with a good alternative for the text background in the cartouche, I am all ears.

Original is here: http://www.nls.uk:8080/StyleServer/c...&plugin=false#

I expect the text in a cartouche to be flowery to the point of silliness as it often is in real maps. I borrowed from that without making the text unreadable. For this I chose another dafonts font, Brock Script: http://www.dafont.com/search.php?psize=m&q=brock. I'm fairly pleased with how that came out too, and yes I know how to spell "commissioned".

Finally, the scale was a straight-forward grid with some Photoshop magic to make it look interesting.

Please share your thoughts on how I can improve this project.

I guess I'm not completely understanding the point being made on the frame. If the problem still exists, could you clarify?

[ravells]

Here's a pic. You may need the shadow to drop from left to right rather than right to left though (haven't checked).

[Immolate]

I'm with you ravells. I have to poke around the WIP folder. I think that at some point the frame got merged which will make changes more difficult. I know my post-prod PSD has the frame as a separate layer, but the components of the frame may not be available. If necessary, I'll just recreate from raw components. Always faster the second time, right?

[Steel General]

Nice update... I think the only thing I would change (other than the shadow fix on the frame) would be to make the compass rose just a bit smaller.