October 2016 Challenge: The T64 Path

[Carbus]

Hey guys! Back again, so for this month's challenge I decided to go with the book from Justin Cronin, The Passage. I remember reading a really interesting and frightning passage, where it tells the story of a little girl journey from Philadelphia to San Jacinto Mountains, CA. What I liked most about this passage is the fact that the whole trip was made in a specialized train, made to survive the attack of Virals/Jumpers/Infected which in the book are Vampire likes, super strong, can jump incredibly high and were supposed to be super soldiers. For this map my main idea is to have a schematics of the train, the T64 and how it was modified, and also the whole trip from Philadelphia to California.

Im kinda divided into two styles, it started as a simple blueprint idea, and then I saw that I could actually make a map from blueprints, but at the same time it would be fun to give it an official "look" into it. So the second choice would be like a government file about the events that happened when the jumpers started attacking. Just to get you guys into the mood, here is a small part of the book about the train:

"What I remember after that is more like a feeling thanany actual thing. I remember children crying, and beinghungry, and the dark and heat and smell of bodies allcrammed in. We could hear gunfire outside and feel the
heat from the fires passing through the walls of the train like the whole world was aflame. They got to be so hot you couldn’t even touch them without burning the skin of your hand. Some of the children weren’t no more than four years old, practically babies. We had two Watchers in the car with us, a man and a woman. Folks think the Watchers were Army but they weren’t, they were from the FEMA.

I remember that because it was written in big yellowletters on the backs of their jackets. My daddy had people down in New Orleans, he’d grown up there before the service, and he always said that FEMA stood for “Fix Everything My Ass.”I don’t remember what became of the woman but that man was First Family, a Chou. He married another Watcher, and after she died, he had two other wives. One of those wives was Mazie Chou, Old Chou’s grandmother. The thing was, the train didn’t stop. Not for anything. Time to time we’d hear a great big boom and the car would shake like a leaf in the wind but still we kept right on. One day the woman left the car and went back to help with some of the other children and came back all crying. I heard her tell the man that the other cars behind us were gone. They’d built the train so that if the jumps got into a car, they could leave it behind, and those were the booms we’d heard, one car after another falling away. I didn’t want to think about those cars and the children inside them, and to this day I don’t. So I’m not going to write anything more about that here. What you’ll want to knowabout is when we got here, and

I do remember something of that, because that was how I found Terrence, my cousin. I didn’t know he was on the train with me, he was in one of the other cars.And it was a lucky thing he hadn’t been in one of the cars at the back, because by the time we arrived there weren’t more than three, and two mostly empty. We were in California, the Watchers told us. California wasn’t a state like it used to be, they said, it was a whole different country. Buses would be meeting us to take us up the mountain, someplace safe. The train slowed to a stop and everyone was afraid but excited too, to be getting off the train after all the days and days, and then the door opened and the light was so bright we all had to hold our hands over our faces. Some of the children were crying because they thought it was the jumps, the jumps were coming to get us, and someone else said, don’t be stupid, it ain’t the jumps, and when I opened my eyes I was relieved to see a soldier standing there. We were someplace in the desert..."

Hope you guys enjoy, and tell me if it fits the theme! I'm kinda on the fence on this one, It has vampires, but the map itself is not "vampirish"? haha

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[kacey]

I'm excited to see this through. I'm such a big fan of you're last challenge entry I'm sure you can't go wrong here, and I think it definitely suits the theme. I think this blueprint idea is really neat, and it's looking great so far. The lines look nice, and clean, and that's something I struggle with so I give you props for that.

[Diamond]

Sweet! I was hoping someone would do something from The Passage. I like the blueprint style more, but I think you could easily combine both by having 'the official letter' laying on top of the blueprint.

[Greg]

Great start Carbus and love the idea, especially with the blueprint!

I think it fits the theme okay. If not for vampires (or near enough), the map wouldn't be existing.

Diamond's suggestion of the combo of letter and blueprint could work pretty well too, but I guess just see how it goes!

[Chashio]

Very interesting, and great start!

[Carbus]

Hey guys, quick update! Following the suggestions I'm mixing both, and as suggested by Diamond, the idea is placing the blueprint on top of the official letter/document. Also humans and jumpers for scale

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philadelphia4.jpg

[Ilanthar]

Very cool! I like a lot the blueprint of the train .

[Diamond]

What about turning the blueprint slightly and adding some shadows underneath it (maybe some fold lines too?) to make it look like it's another piece of paper lying on top.

[Poison]

It's great to see a more "modern" interpretation of the challenge! The blueprint schematics are very nicely done and look convincing. The one thing that bothers me now that they are in the same image is the size of the labels: if we assume the letter is printed on standard size paper the blueprint labels are too small to be read comfortably. You could make the blueprint image larger, and have a table (or envelopes, or more papers, or transparent space) behind both papers, maybe?

Great job, and I look forward to seeing where this goes!

[Bogie]

I am curious about the long rounded "poles" that stick out to the sides of the train, wondering what are they?