November/December 2015 Challenge: Nippur

[arsheesh]

This is an interesting challenge idea. I like how you've incorporated visual aids into the sidebar. Nice work so far.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Chashio]

This is a very interesting/intriguing entry. I like how you used the sidebar stuffs and, actually, I think I prefer the clean look of that over all of the different textures going on with the main map... but then, if you got rid of them I'd probably think it was too bland. Maybe it's just the strong difference that's nagging me, but it does look nice. Very nice job on this, C.

[snodsy]

Really good start, also love the sidebar. I think the scale of the textures for the wall and rooftops seems large. I like the fields. The buildings seem a little too uniform. I see you mentioned you didn't like doing city maps too much, I actually enjoy doing them. Larb has a great tutorial on drawing buildings, which helped me immensely on my Halifax map. Here's his thread. http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...ferrerid=90807

[soggymuse]

The positioning of those labels is deliberate. It's generally considered poor to have labels cross other terrain features, in this case the rivers. Shuruppak is the only one that I couldn't place in such a way as to not cross the river and so that it was next to the dot and not cause ambiguity with a different dot. The doggone name was just too long. I tried vertical spacings, but in the end, having that label cross the river looked the best and clearest.

That also means the Ur label should be to the left of the dot to avoid the river, but if Ur and Eridu labels were even with their dots, that would make it ambiguous which dot represents Ur and which one represents Eridu. By spacing them a little vertically apart, it is clear which is which.

Nippur is deliberately larger and brighter to draw attention to it, because that is the subject of the whole map. I placed it slightly higher than the dot to add emphasis and to space it further from Adab so as not to overwhelm that label nor make it superficially appear that Nippur was closer to Adab than the dots actually show.

Oh, yes, I see. I'd not heard about not covering geological features with labels before. I've always just stroked or outer-glowed them to separate them from the land features, or tried to position things so it's not an issue, but it's good to know! (I can see how Shuruppak would be frustrating. Maybe you can just add a stroke the same brown as the background to make it stand out against the river?)

[Bogie]

I know nothing about labeling, but it looks good.

[Chick]

I've added the rest of the croplands, orchards, and pastures. Also changed the texture on the roofs and wall to what hopefully looks more like the mudbrick they were made of. Some shading and shadowing and other tweaks.

Please comment! This is my first real city map and I really don't know if it's good or bad or terrible, so honesty is appreciated!

### Latest WIP ###
Nippur 12.jpg

[Chashio]

It's good. I'm working on my first architectural map right now (for xpian) and I hope I do as well as you have with this. If some of the textures were refined more (directionally matching the buildings, etc) this would not look out of place in a professionally designed National Geographic article. The layout is nice, everything is clear and informative and it has a good color scheme that works for it; it could use a scale and key, which I'm guessing is your next step, but, yes, it's good.

[Chick]

.... in a professionally designed National Geographic article. ...

Good grief! I was expecting all kinds of change suggestions, but not this. Not only did you make my day brighter, but you inspired me to go back to work on it Thank you so much for such a kind remark

[Chick]

I originally intended to use some cuneiform markers (rather than those little numbers in circles) on this map, tied then to the legend. But it looked so bad and so hard to follow and covered so much of the map itself that I just tossed it entirely and started over.

Because the little Mesopotamia map looked pretty good, I decided to try something similar for the gates and for the city highlights as well. I'm definitely interested in opinions about how well this works.

The only truly identified structures are the Ekur (main temple) of Enlil, Temple of Inanna, a scroll library, a walled palace compound, and the gardens. The rest is speculative, including the mudbrick quarry which must have existed somewhere, and the external military compound which I put in a reasonably likely spot.

### Latest WIP ###
Nippur 13.jpg

[J.Edward]

The pop out maps look great Chick.
On the gates pop out - I wouldn't rotate the text. Go straight horizontal [as it will match your other pop out maps] and if you need to differentiate which gate the text goes to [as down near uruk and nanna gates] just use a small dash line pointing at the gate. Actually, just use a dash line for all gates for uniformity.
On the highlights pop out - all your text is horizontal except 'library' which I would rotate to horizontal to be inline with the rest.

And I thought I should say that this map of yours has definitely inspired me to try some things once I'm done with the challenge map.
The pop out maps are really crisp, clean and fresh. Really good choices Chick.