May/June 2011 Lite Challenge Entry: A Planisphere of Her Majesty's Martian Colony

[Hai-Etlik]

OK, we'll see where this goes. It's going to be a dual hemisphere stereographic map of Mars as colonized by the British Empire under Queen Victoria.

So far I've begun tracing over some Equidistant Cylindrical martian texture maps in QuantumGIS. Given the nature of the map as a bit of pseudovictorian fantasy, I'm not going to be to persnickety about getting canals flowing along the DEM correctly or putting the right terrain in the right places. I'll just use our modern knowledge of areography as a rough template.

### Latest WIP ###
mars.png

In case you were wondering what I mean by "dual hemisphere stereographic map" I mean something like this:
stereo-graticule.png

[tilt]

good to see you enter the challenge ... looking forward to seing it progress

[Hai-Etlik]

OK, here it is re-projected to stereographic, converted to SVG, and fitted in to my template. I really need to work out a better way to do this as it took far more work than it should have.

That's all of the complex technical stuff out of the way, and now it's just a matter of making it pretty.

### Latest WIP ###
stereo-mars.png

[Ascension]

Whaddaya mean, make it pretty? Looks good to me. Heh heh.

[Hai-Etlik]

Some Progress

### Latest WIP ###

stereo-mars.png

[Hai-Etlik]

More progress

### Latest WIP ###

stereo-mars.png

[Hai-Etlik]

More progress, I'm rendering it at a higher resolution to make the fine details a bit more visible.

### Latest WIP ###

stereo-mars.png

[Hai-Etlik]

Some more updates and a bit of texture, though I think it may be a bit too much.

Still need to do symbolize Argyre Planitia and the mountains, and I need to add some more craters, but otherwise it's pretty much done.

### Latest WIP ###
stereo-mars.jpeg

[ravells]

I think this entry may well have one of my votes. Lovely work, Hai.

[Hai-Etlik]

I think this entry may well have one of my votes. Lovely work, Hai.

Thanks, I really wasn't sure about this one when I started on it but it's turned out better than I'd hoped.

And here's another update:

I've added some more craters to the southern highlands, finished off the reservoirs that the canals are feeding, and hachured the mountains (Elysium Mons in particular was a pain)

I've added a faint colour wash since it wouldn't be much of a map of Mars if it weren't red. It also helps highlight the reservoirs and ice caps.

### Latest WIP ###
stereo-mars.jpeg

I'd be happy with this going into the contest but I may make a few more changes.