Styletest: 19th century historical map

[Freodin]

I am doing maps again. I tried a lot of different things in the recent time, but nothing that really made me happy.

Now I am trying a historical style again.

br_it.jpg

Things still to do / change:

Colours: I have to limit myself to a more subtle palette for the country colours.

Font: I can for Mercator's sake not identify what kind of font was used in the original. Some kind of Didot, but that is all that I could find. The one used here is called "Georgia" and was the closest I had at hand. I have downloaded some kind of free Didot variant, and while the text looks better, the numbers are still not right.

Aging effects: Background texture is slapdash right now. Have to do it better.


Further infos: As I did not want to copy the original map 1 to 1, I used the starter setup of Crusader Kings 2 867 / The Old Gods as a template.... after a lot (heck! All!) of hand-adjusting the CK2 map to this layout.
The original map from the 14th edition of the Brockhaus encyclopedia can be found here (BTW: while I used the original map as a template, all of my map is really drawn by me. )

I'll be back soon... hopefully with some serious update (I have to play CK2 )... and a number of questions.

[- Max -]

Looks good so far though I'm wondering if there was that much titles written in gotische fonts on 19th centuries maps Also some borders colors are a bit jarring but it's may be my personnal tastes.

[Freodin]

Update:

Changed the colours to a more suitable setup.... should be better now, I hope.

Changed a number of fonts. I really must start taking notes of my workflow... I don't know if I will ever find the correct setup again.
I also changed the title text to an Antiqua font. I really like the gothic one I used in the first variant, but Max is correct... the colour tables in this type of encyclopedia were all in antiqua, even if the main body of text was set in gothic.

Added more text, city names to be specific.

Added a legend, directly based on the original map and adapted to my setting.

br_it.jpg

(And I already found a few mistakes. )

[Klaus van der Kroft]

Ooh, nice! I like how it looks.

I'm working on a XIX century map myself and I have to wonder, how do you get those borders to work? I haven't been able to properly recreate that style.

[Freodin]

It took me ages to come up with a way that worked for me. These Brockhaus scans have been sitting on my HD forever, and I couldn't find a way to replicate this irregular hatching for the borders (or the sea).

(Note to all: if someone would present a simpler way than I finally did... don't be shy!)

So this is what I did:
The base texture for the borders is rendered in Blender. Basically it is a striped (wave: band) texture, slightly distorted and modified with some noise, then rendered to the size I needed.

workflow1.jpg

In my current work, I already merged down the outer narrow borders and the inner striped borders, so that I cannot colourize them independently any more. That was really really stupid.

But you always learn something, don't you?

[Klaus van der Kroft]

Excellent! I'll try and see if I can get it to work.

Thank you very much for sharing your secrets!

[Freodin]

Slowly but steadily the map gets into the shape I want it to.

I still wasn't satisfied with the colour palette in the last version. It looked about alright in the first map, but when I had finished the second one, with more diverse borders, it just didn't work.

Inspiration took a while to get through. How was the original done? What colours did they use? Closer analysis revealed the answer: it is a simple three-colour print. Should have been obvious.

So I decided to replicate this way of printing also. With the three base colours of red, yellow and blue, each in a specific direction of hatching, and just adding up these colours, I arrived at this version.

br_it3.jpg

I also tried several ways to adding little imperfections in the "print", a last comming down to the simplest of all: doing it by hand.


Basically, this should be it. Workflow is set. Methods tried out. Now all that is left to finish this piece is an inspiration of how to layout the other three maps.

[- Max -]

Great job so far

[Freodin]

I am still tinkering with this. The current version is about as close to my goal as I can get it... but the methods I use get more and more complicated.
Unnecessarily complicated perhaps... I don't think most people are going to notice some of the small details.
One problem I have run into: you cannot use layergroups as layermaps / alphamaps - at least not in the current version of GIMP. So in order to keep this map non-destructive, I have to include a number of backup layers.

Now I have to come around and write all this stuff down, so that I don't forget how I did it.

What do you think? Would it be worth to invest the time, do it right and make a tutorial from it?
br_it2.jpg

[Raptori]

That's really nice. I'd maybe make the water go slightly darker where it's close to the land, just to provide a bit of extra contrast, but other than that tiny detail it's a gorgeous style. +1 for a tutorial!