Venus Public Transit - by töff

[ravells]

Map (Click to enlarge)




Created in: Illustrator

Review
We congratulate töff for contributing our first featured map on a science fiction theme using vector software (Illustrator). The Venus Public Transit map is a representation of a public transport map of the future. In addition to the beautiful colour pallete used by the artist and the sound composition is the convincing nature of the map itself which would not look out of place as a prop in a high budget science fiction film. What makes the map so believable is the wealth of detail used and the visual similarities to existing public transport maps, but with an ultra-modern twist. Both functional and beautiful, this map represents imaginary cartography at its best. Töff also shows that vector software can achieve results equally impressive as raster based paint packages.

Artists Notes
VPT is part of an RP/fanfic storyworld called "The LATTICE," set in the 157th century. Humanity's history has been long and fraught, on Earth, in the stars, and no less on Venus. Because some cities had been mentioned, but no clear, extensive descriptions of Venus in this far future had ever been developed, I took the occasion to do a map of sorts. It doesn't cover all of Venus (e.g., no city details), but it does reveal more than just the public transit routes. We see where the main surface and underground cities are, as well as a lot of historical sites (complete with dates!). This map is the first serious piece of storyworld background for Venus, and there are multiple opportunities (as usual) for fantastic tales of adventure based on any small element from this map. Sadly, the RP has fallen to inactivity, for now, but the storyworld is alive and well in solo fiction.

This is my first transit map, and it was a lot of fun. It was more challenging than I thought, in some ways, like making up the different kinds of routes. At one point I thought I would have some numbered routes, like "the number 9 bus," but as usual things didn't turn out the way I thought. I also intended to abstract the routes more, not follow proportional distances between stops; but, using a satellite pic underneath, that quashed that idea, and also led to the complication of running some routes straight between point A and point B but others angling off to avoid overlap, which is not how the vehicles would move. But still, a transit map only has to show connections, right? That's the story I'm sticking with.

Done entirely in Illustrator CS3, printed thru a Fiery to a color laser at 11x17, and cut down (bleed) to 10x16.

Original Thread
Click here to view the original thread by the author