New Dawn of the West (redesign)

[Coyotemax]

Well, for those of you who have been following this epic journey, it's finally come to an end. And as with most journeys in my experience, the real joy is in the travelling, though the destination is worth it

So, AslanC requested to have someone redesign his hex based map New Dawn of the West, and I happened to be the one who ended up getting involved (there's a story behind that too, but that's for another day).

I was feeling inspired, and between a few tutorials and my own previous self taught experiences, I figured I could make a decent job of it.

I have to say, AslanC was patient with my design process, I admit I could have done more comparisons between this version and the original hex grid, but I was so eager to keep things moving, I forgot to once I got the elements in the general locations That having been said, I learned a lot from this project, how to keep things organized and listed, keeping a set structure for filenames, and so on (and a few things I'll do differently if I ever do this sort of thing again). And i kept notes on what I did so I can recreate things if I do a similar map in the future. I also pushed my system and learned a few things about how photoshop works with my system in particular, and how to work around a few things (having 400 separate text layers slows down the machine, but if I close the preview/navigation thumbnail, it solves the speed issue since it's not constanty updating that.. as an example...)

This also gave me the opportunity to add in my own original artistic elements, which is something I'd been planning on doing in a piece for some time now.


Thanks for the words of encouragement from everyone who spoke up, and Thanks to AslanC for providing me with a great experience! (hopefully he adds a few notes about his half of the design experience..)

So without further ado,
The New (but not necessarily improved) Dawn of the West!!