January 2018 Challenge: The Grimpati Peninsula

[elboe]

I think this is a great idea for a challenge! I recently joined the community to work on the lite challenge. I was about complete with that drawing and this one was posted. I like it because I have an idea for a world map and I need practice to figure out my technique. I also want to try out Adobe Illustrator for this challenge and try to use the appearance panel to get the look I want. The lite challenge I did in Autodesk Sketchbook Pro so this map will be a completely new type of drawing.

So below is my first WIP. I found the font online so I re-entered the text in the same positions. I am using a parchment texture background I downloaded from Mouse from the links in his signature, thank you!

The lines around the land masses have 3 strokes and a fill applied in the appearance panel, with effects applied to each. Not quite sure if I have it how I want it yet. I may redraw the lines with my Wacom, I originally just moused them since I had forgot my tablet at work. I'll see, but it's easy to just copy the appearance to the new lines.

Next step is to draw the land features (mountains, trees, hills, rivers, etc.) which I hope to use a scatter brush to lay it down. I hope that works.

### Latest WIP ###
Elboe_Jan2018MapChallengeWIP1.png

[Greg]

Nice start, Elboe! It's got a nice feel to it already and I'm looking forwards to how you tackle the land features.

[elboe]

I'm finding this is a lot slower in Illustrator on my 9 year old laptop than it would be on my work tower. It's coming along, even though I haven't had a huge amount of time to spend on it.

I did find some Illustrator map brushes and symbols that are going to work. On the map below, all of the mountains and hills are scatter brushes applied to a series of lines, except the hills below Turarak. Those were applied with the symbol sprayer as a test, I'm not keeping them there. It all still need a lot of tweaking. The brush pack also has river brushes, I'm going to add those next I think. If you have access to Illustrator you should try these out.

The brushes are from here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuildi...rator_so_make/

The symbols are from here:
http://mappractical.blogspot.com/201...lustrator.html

### Latest WIP ###
Elboe_Jan2018MapChallengeWIP2.png

[elboe]

Another update. I'm not getting as much time to work on this as I'd hoped but it's coming together okay. I added sea lanes, swamp, and some rivers. I tweaked the mountains and hills. I added the silt to the Great Silt Sea and made the hills feeding it more brown. I think my land mass shapes are too smooth and I may still work on changing them. The mountains look okay but I may redo the hills with the symbol sprayer instead of the scatter brush.

The idea I have for this land is that the peninsula itself is the edge of an unexplored continent and is full of dangers: giants, monsters, etc. The civilized peoples live on the islands where it is safer. Outposts have been set up on the frontier of the peninsula where resources not easily available on the islands are in abundance. The islands themselves are towns originally set up as colonies of a near by kingdom on another continent.

### Latest WIP ###
Elboe_Jan2018MapChallengeWIP3.png

[elboe]

Another small update. I had some software issues so I didn't get as much done as I'd hope. I mainly adjusted the landmass shapes.

### Latest WIP ###
Elboe_Jan2018MapChallengeWIP4.png

[Ilanthar]

What software issues? Some of us may help if you give us some details.
It's coming along nicely, btw .

[elboe]

What software issues? Some of us may help if you give us some details.
It's coming along nicely, btw .

Thanks Ilanthar. The software issues I think come down to me using an 8 year old laptop and pushing Illustrator very hard. I have 3 strokes applied to the outlines of my landmasses, plus effects. If I move the points to far one of the strokes will fail, and it takes awhile to rerender the object every time I change a point so I end up undoing. You can see that I didn't catch it on the peninsula shape before I output my last WIP. Plus I didn't follow the save often rule and lost an hour of work on an Illustrator hang. If anyone uses Illustrator for their maps I'll take any advice, but I think it's just learning the best order of operations and techniques.

Okay, on to the WIP. I finally adjusted the outlines of the landmasses to make them more natural, I don't know if it's enough though. I added color to the mountain areas by using a variable with line behind the mountain shapes with a feather effect applied. I added latitude and longitude lines and travel direction lines from the capital.

I think next time I would try adding a gradient mesh to the land objects to control the color better. Draw and learn I guess.

### Latest WIP ###
Elboe_Jan2018MapChallengeWIP5.png

[Azélor]

You do have many points/lines and it might be causing some performance issues.

I used Illustrator to get the linework done on one map before. I had to stop because I was pushing the software or my computer to the limits.
I saved the layers individually and imported them in Photoshop to continue working on the project.
Personally (I don't know what version of Illustrator yo are using) I think Illustrator is not well optimized and tend to crash easily.

[elboe]

You do have many points/lines and it might be causing some performance issues.

I used Illustrator to get the linework done on one map before. I had to stop because I was pushing the software or my computer to the limits.
I saved the layers individually and imported them in Photoshop to continue working on the project.
Personally (I don't know what version of Illustrator yo are using) I think Illustrator is not well optimized and tend to crash easily.

There are a lot of points, but I think my biggest slow down is the effects I have been applying to the lines in the Appearance panel. I have multiple strokes, plus fx and opacities that it needs to rerender on any change. I am working in Illustrator CS5.1 on my 2009 MacBook Pro at home. This is the biggest project i've tried on that. My tower at work with Illustrator CS 2018 would handle it better I think.

This really was just a test for me to see how well suited Illustrator is for this type of map. I think it shows much promise but the technique needs to be figured out better. I like the fact that I can scale the map to any size and it will be nice and crisp. In Photoshop if I set my resolution high to get a large map with 300ppi then it's slow as well. I am planning on using Photoshop on the Lite challenge next to see how it goes in comparison.

[elboe]

I have traced the effect that is having the biggest impact on the time Illustrator is taking to render my map shapes. I have an Outer Glow effect (fx) on the land form shapes. When I toggles it off for all of the shapes it took under 15 seconds to redraw, when I toggled it back on it took about 50 seconds. It makes a substantial effect on the map though so I don't know if I should find another way to get the look or just put up with it.

In the image below the left is with the glow on and the right it's off. For those who don't know Illustrator I have selected all of the land shapes which you can see because the points of the lines are highlighted. The appearance panel is open showing the fill and 3 strokes applied to all of the shapes, along with the fx and Opacities of each stroke and fill.

OuterGlowCompare.png

The biggest difference is obviously the fill color almost disappears. There next is the scroll pen stroke also almost disappears. I have some ideas to fix it but it will take some trial and error.