1920's Style Topographical Map

[mcurtis]

Greetings. I'm currently looking to have a map recreated for use with an article (and possible series) for Fight On! magazine. The article will detail a fictional area of the Catskill region of New York State. The area depicted in the article is based loosely upon real places, however, and I've found several vintage U.S. Geological survey topographical maps of that area. As they are very detailed (too much so for a roleplaying article), I'd like to have them reproduced in a manner that eschews some of the detail will still retaining a realistic appearance. And while the geographical details will remain intact, names will need to be changed. I'm hoping someone might be interested in this project and be willing to step in to help. Here are the project's criteria.

Commission: Unpaid. This is for a fanzine article aimed at the old school gaming community and neither myself or cartographer will be paid for our work.


Time Constraints: 2-4 months depending on the writing time required to assemble the accompanying article.

Style: Semi-realistic topographical map with a 1920's vibe if possible. This is the one of the maps I hope to recreate.

Quality & Size: The map will appear in print and PDF. The printed version will be greyscale and should span two printed pages (approx. 11" x 17"). A 300 dpi image will be required to ensure print quality.


Copyright - As with all submissions to Fight On!, the contributor retains full ownership of his/her work and the magazine only asks permission to reproduce it in its issue or issue omnibuses. I will retain ownership of the text article; the cartographer will retain the rights to his/her map.

If you are interested in sharing a byline with me on this submission, please contact Michael Curtis at poleandrope@gmail.com. Thank you very much for considering this and have a pleasant day.

[ravells]

I'm afraid that I don't have time to do this but it looks to me that if you know the exact area in question and the topography has not changed too much, this would be a perfect job for Fractal Terrains and CC2 (not sure if FT exports to CC3). You could import DEM data of the real location into Fractal Terrains and export that as a CC2 map. In CC2 you could define the contour intervals, put in labels etc.

I see that Fight On! Magazine is not a free publication.

[mcurtis]

This is why I'm appealing to the cartography experts. All that sounds very impressive, but is near-incomprehensible to me. I'm hoping someone with the skill and tools you suggest can step in to help.

Fight On! is a fanzine dedicated to the old school roleplaying revival and is assembled quarterly by its editor. Issues are not free as you mention, but the net profit pays the editor beer money for his hard work to see each issue to completion. Contributors receive a PDF of the issue their work appears in, retains all rights to their creations, gets an opportunity to showcase their work to a growing audience, and gets the satisfaction of sharing their work with the gaming community at large. It is understood that this is not enough for some creative individuals, and if that is the case here, it's understood. I'm contributing the article that the map will hopefully accompany because I consider it an exciting project worth sharing and not for monetary gain.

[tilt]

if you know how many readers Fight On! have that might help in convincing people to help you. Unfortunatly I don't have time at the moment myself or I might have picked it up just for the heck of it *lol*

[ravells]

mcurtis, I'm getting tempted to do this for you....sounds like a good venture! (I'll try to find the time).

Can you tell me what sort of scale within the Catskills you're looking for the map to have? Just give me a google earth screenshot that will be fine.

[mcurtis]

Certainly! This is the area I'm looking at. It's roughly 18 miles x 15 miles in size.



I've put together a patchwork jpg of the U.S. Geological survey maps covering the area I'm interested in. It can be downloaded here if you'd like a more detailed look at the vicinity.

Give it a look, see if it sparks your interest, and then let me know if it's something you'd like to take on. Thank you for your interest!

[ravells]

I'm just playing around at the moment but what about something along these lines? Presumably you'll want something simpler than the 20ft contours in the examples you've given. I've used the colour scheme and added a bit of a parchment effect to it and thrown in some random labelling. It's a start!