Ankh-Morpork Z to A (challenge entry)

[Straf]

For the March/April Lite challenge the challenge was to do a book cover that had a map as part of it.

For those unfamiliar with them there are a huge set of guides and atlases here in the UK called A to Z. So called because there's an index in the back listing streets and whatnot in alphabetic order.

The company who makes these does so under licence from Ordnance Survey.

I thought it was about time that Ankh-Morpork had such an offering so I've put together a cover design to show to the Patrician and Sir Veigh Or'Dance, the A-M Cartographer General:

Ankh-Morpork Z to A.jpg

The WIP thread may be found here.

I think this challenge has been my favourite so far as it pushed me to learn a bit more about GIMP, namely how to use paths. It was a tool I had known about but hadn't really used them. The street atlas is an ideal application, I made the paths with a combination of straight lines and trying to master the bezier curves using the handles. Once I had the correct lines in place, I merged them into one and then stroked them all at once, twice. The first was a wider width and a different colour to the second so it created a border. I found that stroking them at once made sure that intersections were open rather than closed. I then did the same for other types of roads.

The cover was started in Inkscape where I set out the top half title text and the two bars across. The svg was imported into GIMP and I stroked a curved path then, using guides and more paths I produced those red boxes down the right hand side. The map was done in a separate file, and scaled down (but still larger than the 'map window') below the other layers so only a section of the map is visible.

Oh yeah, the model I used looked a bit like this:

s-l225.jpg

[ChickPea]

I loved this entry!

[Mouse]

Straf - where would we be without your incurable sense of humour?

The map is great! You've come a very long way in a very short time