Isle of Skye clan map

[ChickPea]

I started this on a whim this afternoon, more as an experiment than anything else.

The Isle of Skye (for the uninitiated) is a real place off the west coast of Scotland and, in ye olden days, was the home of several Scottish clans. I got the map and the terrain from Wikipedia, and messed about with the colours in Gimp. I wanted to try for a heavily textured look with rich colours and this is what I've got so far.

I'm quite liking the way the land has turned out but I'm not totally satisfied with the labelling. I want to make the Clans the focus, and have only included a few prominent towns just for reference really, but looking at it again, I think the towns don't stand out enough and I'm not completely sold on the font. Not sure about the clan borders dividing line either. Does it seem prominent enough, or should I do more to emphasise the different regions? I might try a small glow around the border. I tried making it lighter in colour but it felt like it didn't fit with the rest of the map.

Still lots to do obviously. I want to include some clan crests and obviously a title, but I'll get to that.

Any feedback?

skye1.jpg

[Chashio]

That's very rich indeed. I like it. The border is maybe a bit too much actually - the thick dark fuzzy aspects are putting me off, whereas the rest of the map and labeling is very clean and refined. I like the town labels the way you have them... I think it ties them in nicely with the darker lines and edges of the map, though maybe the text could be a touch larger (or maybe not - it's hard to tell what the actual full size is on my phone screen so they may be fine). And I like the lighter labels for the clans, with just the touch more gold to them. Did you try the border in that color as well? I think it would fit better closer to that, or maybe a bit more to yellow even, because then it would be immediately recognizable what your division is representing. But I would definitely make it smaller and crisper. Other than that, I'm not sure what that lone black label is about (The Cuillins) ? I don't have much opinion on the font type... it looks good to me, but if you don't like it then maybe someone else can give you a better idea. Hope that's helpful.

[Meshon]

This is a great start. I like the rugged leathery look that your colours produce. You might want to try swapping the black you're using for borders and towns for a lighter colour. Because the clan names are grrrand, you probably don't have to worry about the wee details competing.

Fun project!

Cheers,
Meshon

Sent from my SGH-I747M using Tapatalk

[ChickPea]

Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated!

Chashio, I did try a lighter border between the clan areas, but it seemed (to me) that it stuck out like a sore thumb and didn't blend at all. Although I think I was still using a solid line at that point, and only later I changed it to a dashed line, so maybe it'll look better with dashes or dots. I plan to take another look at it tonight.

I think I might try changing the town names to a lighter colour too, as Meshon suggests. Although I think they work OK with the darker colour, I think they're too easily overlooked and need to stand out a little more. The Cuillins is actually a mountain range, not a clan, which is why I made it the same dark colour as the towns. I guess I need to amend this to "Cuillin Mountains" to make it clear! I put Cuillins in caps partly because they're an important geographical feature, and partly because the lower case text I was using for towns got lost against the mountainous background terrain. But I can see that it's not consistent, and also a little confusing, which is another reason I need to go back and redo my labelling!

The solid line around the very edge of the map is more of a placeholder than anything else right now. I'm hoping to do something a bit fancier, though I've no idea what yet.

Will work some more on it tonight. Thanks again!

[Ilanthar]

It's very red ! The black labels are hard to read on the land. I really like the render of the mountains. Curious to see where you're going with it.

[ChickPea]

It's very red !

Haha yeah, the land's the colour of blood from all those dead Highland warriors!!

[ChickPea]

Latest update.

I've reworked the labelling and I'm much happier with what I have now. I changed the font and colour, and I tweaked the positioning & size of some names, and I feel this works better. I also changed the clan borders to the same colour as the labelling and made it a thinner dotted line and I think it's a big improvement on what I had before.

I've also tweaked the colours overall and toned down the red, but hopefully still keeping the rich colour tones. I added a dark shadow effect around the edge to make the island 'pop' more. There were a few other minor tweaks, like removing the lakes, because I didn't feel they added anything.

The border at the edge of the map is only a try-out as I'm running out of time tonight, and I'll probably change that over the next few days, but I just wanted to put something there to get a feel for it just now. Haven't decided what I want yet, but it'll likely be something Celtic-y.

That's about it for now.

skye2.jpg

[Abu Lafia]

Hi ChickPea, i really love your map so far! The red-brown colours look very good. My only critique is, that some of the labels are too close to the coastlines ("MACCRIMMON", "NICHOLSON" and "MACQUEEN"). Keep up the great work!

[ChickPea]

Thanks, Abu.

My problem with some of the names is that those particular clans occupy fairly small territories. Therefore if I place the label where it looks nicer (i.e. further away from the coast lines) it makes it look as though their lands are larger than they really are. But ... I'm not really going for 100% historical accuracy (I don't really know enough to know exactly where clan boundaries were), so I could probably nudge them a few pixels and perhaps try a slightly smaller font size. They couldn't have nice little short names that would fit perfectly, oh no, that would be too easy!

I'm thinking of changing Nicholson to the Gaelic version of the name. I'm not sure why the reference map I used for my boundaries gave the Anglicised version but I think the Gaelic name would be more authentic. So I'll take another look at it when I change the name and see what I can do. Thanks for the feedback.

[Diamond]

Looking good so far, ChickPea. Ye've got tae hae those bluiddy red hues ya knows.