Extrasolar colony world

[jshoer]

Ha! I love it. Only a little meshuggah. I'd be happy to throw a Yiddish place name in there if you've got a good one. Maybe not Annatevka.

So, everybody, I call this update, "Break the dam! Release the riverrrrrrrr!"

Colony13.png

Two questions for everybody:

1. You can see I am also trying a more organic look to the forests. What do you think? Are the rounded organic edges or the hard edges better?

2. I am wondering if there is a filter of some kind I should consider applying on top of the mountain shading, to add some variation in texture. I am not really sure that would improve the map, especially given the sci-fi feel, but maybe there are some other opinions out there...?

[Zemurray]

Ha! I love it. Only a little meshuggah. I'd be happy to throw a Yiddish place name in there if you've got a good one. Maybe not Annatevka.

Thanks! The rivers are great, and I think I prefer the more organic looking forest boundaries to the previous, more blocky ones.

As for the Yiddish place names, I have a few ideas. While Fiddler on the Roof is undeniably a good movie, I'd say we can do better than that. If you wanted a more urbanized settlement, perhaps a Yiddish speaking district of one of the main settlements (like Colony or Transceiver Tower), then a name like Spinoza could be a good pick. Baruch Spinoza was a ground-breaking 17th century philosopher from the Netherlands, whose writings were integral for the later Enlightenment.
Conversely, for a more rural settlement, I would suggest inspiration from a very obscure topic; the Jewish farm colonies of turn of the century Western Canada. After the pogroms of the late 19th century, Yiddish speaking refugees settled several rural farming settlements in the prairies of Saskatchewan, in Canada. They had names like Sonnenfeld and Edenbridge, settlements that persisted until the 1960s. I think that naming an interstellar settlement after one of these tenacious farming villages would be quite fitting. If this topic interests anyone, then the links below provide more information on the Jewish farming settlements.

Anyways, long informational tangent aside, I hope those names help. Actually, has the planet itself been given a name yet? That may be something to work on as well.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saska...seum-1.1302867
http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/transactio...sandwest.shtml

[jshoer]

As you can see from the top bar, I've given the planet the working title "Monde." However, I don't really like that very much and am still thinking about it. For the most part, the theme on naming things on this world is that they are fairly straightforwardly descriptive of the thing, in various languages ("Green Mountain," "Tall Trees," "Yellow Rocks," "Landing Field," etc). "Sonnenfeld" doesn't seem too far off...

EDIT: I had a new idea, to add a second layer of green for grassland:
Colony14.png

[jshoer]

I tried a few more ideas, and I quite like where this is heading - though I still have some things to do!

Colony15.png

The first thing I did was punch up the opacity on the sandy tint of the land. Then I put a clipping mask layer over all the terrain colors, and used it to remove all the color from the mountains. (There are a couple places where I need to clean up some escaping forests now.) The last thing I tried is changing the political border layers from "Normal" to "Hard Light." I think the overall changes add a lot of interest to the map.

Now that there are more colors piling on top, I might have to redo the black lines.

What do you think?

[jshoer]

I'm drafting some symbols for each state, to place in info boxes about them.

Here's Colony:
Symbol Colony.png

Weilai:
Symbol Prospect.png

Arksite:
Symbol Arksite.png

The Khet Compact:
Symbol Khet.png

And my favorite of them, Transceiver Tower:
Symbol Trnscvr Twr.png

I think I'm not as good at designing symbols as I am at other aspects of the maps.

[jshoer]

Here are the symbols integrated with the rest of the map!

Colony16.png

It's really looking like it's approaching a finished product now.

[jshoer]

I cleaned up a few escaping forests and added an info box advertising more work for me to do.

Unless there are any comments in the next week or so, I might call it done here and make a finished map thread--

Colony17.png

[Sulla]

I find your finished project, and the deep story it implies, absolutely fascinating.... and I love the idea of the map as published by an entity within the world rather than an external omniscient force (like so much mapmaking)... LOVE it!

[Tiluchi]

Wow! Haven't commented on this thread in a while, but it's so cool to see the map (and story!) developing. Makes me want to know more about the world.

[jshoer]

I had a thought, now that I seem to be done with the base map, that I could quickly rearrange the graphic elements to actually produce some of the maps I suggested in that legend. Well, "quickly" took a little longer than anticipated, but here are two of the others! I don't think I'll do any more, but this at least gives a little more flavor to the world.

First, we have a map detailing the evolution of the Quarantine War following the plague in Colony.
ColonyQuarantineWar.png

Second - and I thought a little more fun - a map showing the various wildlife of the planet. The colonists named creatures and plants as they encountered them. One or two references are scattered around here!
ColonyFloraFauna.png

This is probably the end of my project here. Any last suggestions or comments before I put a three-map series in the finished forum?