September 2015 Challenge: The Durnstel Estimates

[foremost]

Thanks for the comments guys!

There have been a couple notes about the icons. As I mentioned in one of the first few points, they were copyright free online. I didn't make them and I don't know how to make them . That's why I couldn't increase the line thickness and why you see repetition.

There were a limited number of icons, and I ended up using all or almost all of them. To solve this problem, I thought the Tokyo icon really lended itself to depicting a very uniform state. When I made the last nation I used what I believe to be the second-best icon for this purpose. I do think having green be uniform works well, as green isn't all about individual expression and individual freedoms! Red, not as much.

With so little time left, I don't think it's within my abilities to learn how to make icons and redo them all. My options are:
1) Keep it as is.
2) Diversify the red cities, but using the same icons as I used for purple up top.
All, please let me know which of the two options you'd rather see. I shall bow to the wisdom of the commenters

[Diamond]

Depending on what software you're using, a really simple cheat to make the lines thicker would be to duplicate the icon layer, then shift the duplicate off to one side just a pixel or two. This will give you the illusion of thickness, but don't go too far. If you use photoshop or gimp, you could also experiment with a simple one- or two-pixel stroke around the icons.

I thought you mentioned what software you're using in this thread, but after scanning through, I don't see it. Maybe I was imagining that.

[foremost]

I thought you mentioned what software you're using in this thread, but after scanning through, I don't see it. Maybe I was imagining that.

I mentioned Google Drawings in post #24... yeah, that's right, Google Drawings. It will be a while yet before I can make heads or tails of photoshop. So many questions.

I did try the shifting trick after Illanthar mentioned it. It didn't work the first time, since I was downloading as a PNG, and those come out low-res. If I have time here at the end, I will try it again, this time with the high-res PDF conversion thing-a-ma-jig (<-- that's why I don't use photoshop).

[foremost]

Worked on it for several hours this afternoon... and I think I've finished it. This should be the final update, unless I catch some glaring typos or other issues that need to be addressed last minute.

### Latest WIP ###
The Durnstel Estimates (15).jpg

Thanks for all of your advice... all of you had great recommendations!

Thoughts still welcome, though, especially about the icon issues mentioned above.

Really relieved to be done with this before the bell

[jbgibson]

For raw materials to expand the city icon variety, look at dafont.com for free symbol fonts Cityscape (two different ones), Little City 2000, New York City, and Famous Buildings. None are exactly in the format you have of course, but some of the characters could be tweaked.

Awesome map, and dead center in the theme, by the way - nicely done!