December Entry: Kazh - Homeworld of the Klarr

[su_liam]

This comp seemed to be up my alley. Perhaps it will get me off my arse an' postin'.

### Latest WIP ###
Kazh_Labelled4.jpg

Edit: Hopefully this is okay. The planet is already formed insofar as continent shapes are concerned, but I have a lot of cartography and not a little worldbuilding left to do. If not, I'll do Shtakamashkan instead, which really doesn't have any terrain design at all yet.

[su_liam]

Well. Inevitably enough I've fallen off the wagon. After manipulating my data considerably in Wilbur, I decided to port it into ArcGIS by way of SagaGIS.

This is an early and now lost color scheme. For some reason ArcGIS refused to properly project the grids even though I had the spatial references all properly set.

### Latest WIP ###
EquiMapPNG.png

[su_liam]

As an experiment, to see how it looks, I've decided to render the map so far using Eckert V, which I think is fairly attractive.

### Latest WIP ###
KazhEckertV.png

[su_liam]

One more WIP for the night, then I turn into a pumpkin.
Added a bit of background color. Not sure if I like this yet. I'll have a look in the morning.

### Latest WIP ###
KazhEckertVBG.png

[Steel General]

Some neat stuff here su_liam.

[Greason Wolfe]

Glad to see you involved in this one, su_liam. When I first read the challenge, my thought was that this was right up your alley. I've enjoyed reading your sci-fi blog and would have been sad if you hadn't had a chance to enter this month's challenge. Oh, and btw, looking good so far. I do like that projection quite a bit.

GW

[su_liam]

Added some cities, a legend and a few digitized rivers. The Eckert V projection in ArcGIS ate my ocean polygons, so those labels will have to be manual.

I can't pretend I'm altogether happy with the cities. The markers are just... eeeugh, and I've yet to work out a good labelling style. Maybe I'll try out Maplex. Yeah. Those city markers have got to go.

Down the line, I may reduce the map size to add planetary astronomical data. I also need to alter my datum so that its sized for Kazh and not Earth.

### Latest WIP ###
KazhEckertV1210.png

[su_liam]

I don't want to call this a WIP just yet. More of an experiment, or possibly a false alley. There's a lot of space down there I'd need to fill, somehow.

KazhEckertVBigTextBox.png

[Ascension]

Just put some flags in that empty space. It's a good way to fill space.

[su_liam]

Large blocks of text are such a PITA with ArcMap that I might just export to Illustrator to finish 'er off. I may even use Photoshop for blending purposes.

Still, flags are FTW!