Bark

[Eowyn Cwper]

I made a bark map! I filtered a photograph of bark to make it look like a lunar surface. I'll be writing a short story around it when it's over – I've got a nice idea already. Critiques more than welcome!

uhh, map.png

[Tiana]

Huh, I'd never thought of doing that before but the results aren't so bad, it's a very convincing cliff sort of result. If I wanted a lunar surface I'd have gone straight to the source of prime space art... NASA... because their terms of use for their photography and artist renditions are very generous. Zoomed in I would hardly know, except there is something about it that cues me to think it's a processed photo. You don't have to do anything about that, nothing wrong with a good ol photo manipulation... but if you want to decrease its photoyness, I'd remove or reduce the tiny speckles of spots and replace them with a draw-over of hatching or pointillism that follows the more vector smoothness of your lines and is more limited in presence rather than scattered throughout. Also, I would turn all of the deep shadows black instead of having that bit of a purpleish cast. You can probably achieve this by setting your magic wand selection tool to have a wider range of similar colors, and not adjacent pixels. Create a new layer, and fill it in with black. Maybe run 'smooth selection' and that might make it closer resemble the vector art you've added on top and complete the illusion that you did this by hand.

You don't have to though. I like the result quite a bit, I just worry it stands out a bit from the art you've added by hand. Which is super cute and a great start to a lunar base.

[Levtrona]

great idea. I would just add some shadow to the stations. Love the result anyway.

[Eowyn Cwper]

Thank you so much for your feedback! Shadows seem like a good idea, especially in replacement for the homegenous outlines I set for the stations.

I'll try to integrate your suggestions at some point, Tiana. If you have suggestions for fonts that would fit the theme, I'm also listening. What do you mean by “start to a lunar base” though? Any thoughts on what you would add?

[blattacker]

That is a really interesting idea! The only thing I can think of to mention is that, judging by the habitats present on the surface, I'm assuming this moon has little to no atmosphere? If so, it would likely have (depending on the amount of debris in the solar system, I suppose) an almost uncountable number of impact craters of various sizes, even down to pebble sized. Coming at it from a VFX artist perspective, if I were going to be making a lunar landscape, I'd try to have that represented in the terrain somehow. But that's also super nitpicky, and maybe there is an atmosphere, but it's not breathable, or the moon has no atmosphere, but is geologically active (unlike Earth's moon), so tectonic movement and/or erosion have faded the impact craters over time.

[Eowyn Cwper]

I actually thought of craters. I gave them up because I was afraid to get discouraged but I'll make sure to account for their absence in the lore story that'll come along with the map! Thank you! <3

[blattacker]

I'll start out by saying that I don't know if this will work out the way I'm expecting, but if you wanted to give it a try while still sticking to the photomanipulation aspect of the map, I'm wondering if maybe a picture or layered pictures of concrete would work to make a basic crater map? Like if you were to take a picture of concrete (specifically the kind with multiple sizes of rocks/pebbles in it), and utilizing filters in an raster image program (my first thought is either a posterize or a find edges style filter), you could theoretically get a bunch of vaguely round outlines that you could overlay on the map, and if you took several, you could easily iterate it with overlapping craters in the same way.

Barring that, though, simply accounting for the lack of impact craters in the lore is a good alternative!

[Eowyn Cwper]

That's a very interesting idea, I'll give it a try! Nuik yr!

[Tiana]

Craters were the most significant absence I noted. I'd just get some crater photos from NASA and do the same photoshop to them. I'd also like to see perimeters either with fencing or maybe with equipment tracks. A great source of inspiration for you might be the game "Surviving Mars".

For a font are you thinking sci-fi or modern?

[Eowyn Cwper]

Thanks for the ideas again! That game is truly inspirational. Could you specify what you mean by “equipment tracks”? Like tracks surrounding the buildings for maintenance and such?

I'm not sure what kind of font I want; maybe modern.