[WIP] Pashaîla - New software test with Affinity Designer

[Mouse]

You are being very kind and generous with your thoughts on the software, Lyrillies - thank you

What people believe is always the truth, but in my experience there are usually as many different versions of the truth as there are people who believe in it

On to the map...

Overall its coming along nicely now, but there are a couple of points I would like to mention, if I may:

• The colours are lovely, but I do feel a need to increase the difference between light and dark to give the map just a tiny bit more contrast - more depth.
  
• I'm not very keen on the massively rounded corners on everything. They take up a lot of space, when the boxes of text etc would only really need to be about 3/4 the size they are without them - leaving much more room for the map, proportionally speaking.
  
• There's an awful lot of sea around the island. Are you going to be filling that area with important information? If not, then (and if its possible) you might consider enlarging the size of the island so that it just fits nicely in the frame, rather than having all that blue nothingness around it.

Don't forget that all these things are matters of personal taste - my personal taste. Please don't take them to heart, and continue just as you are if you disagree with them

[Lyrillies]

That is excellent advice, thank you Mouse!

• Contrast is definitely no problem to adjust and I can see why you would like that. i have an old fear of making the colours too strong, so maybe sometimes I tend to overcorrect.
• As for the rounded corners - I'm not too happy with them either. But your comment just gave me a new idea on how to include all the info I want to have in the map in a different way! I'll see what I can do and show you as soon as possible.
• ...and that would probably also solve the problem of too much open ocean-space!

Ah I wish I could run now and try that idea you gave me, but I have an appontment now...

[Mouse]

Hold onto that idea!

If you are anything like me, you get a moment of inspiration, and then the phone goes, or someone knocks at the door, and its gone!

Write them down

EDIT: Contrast is the light and shade of a piece. Saturation is the colour. You should be able to adjust the contrast without changing the colours (though most software seems to get this confused, which is very irritating). I would be interested to know how Affinity handles an adjustment of contrast. The colours should stay the same but just be either darker (more black) or lighter (more white) than they are.

[Ilanthar]

Interesting and nice way to depict the land. You'll have a lot of water around your land though, a bit too much imho, except if you plan to do something with it.

[Lyrillies]

Thanks Ilanthar! I'm not entirely sure how to understand that statement though xD Is this is an unusual way of depicting land? As for the water - I'm working on an idea at the moment, will update as soon as possible

Mouse: Sorry I wasn't clear enough - sometimes my english sentences suffer a bit from the general confusion in my head. I definitely meant contrast, the saturation should be okay here, I think.

[Mouse]

Don't apologise. Your English is very good - better than mine is sometimes when I'm tired

[Lyrillies]

Thank you Mouse, that's very kind

Well then, on to the map at hand - your suggestions were real eye openers!
I guess since I don't really know what I'm doing in Affinity my head went: "I got this far by sheer luck and it looks okay and I don't wanna mess it up so it's fine like it is"

I tried around a lot with the options for contrast/shadows and lights (there are two different options for that in Affinity and they definitely have pretty different effects! I'll attach an example) and found that, indeed, the entire image looked a bit dull. What do you think Mouse, is it better now?

### Latest WIP ###
pashaila_new.jpg

I certainly like it more than before, but that doesn't mean it's really good yet. And it is always helpful to get the opinion of someone who hasn't spent hours upon hours looking at the same image - I'm sure you know that effect when at some point after working for hours you can't tell whether what you're doing is good or not because you lost all sense of perspective and comparison for your project.

As promised, I also tried to solve the rounded edges/too much water problem by simply putting all my extra info on the actual map instead of next to it. I'm not happy yet with the L-shape on the left, but all in all it does looks much more dynamic in my eyes - but again, other opinions are very welcome! I also added a nice paper-y texture that I just found this evening but I'm not sure if it's too much. Maybe a bit less texture? Oh also please ignore the four or five names on the map - I started to label stuff but I'm unhappy with it, as always. But I might have to play around some more with the shadow/light option, I really like the effect of that one.

Issues remaining:

• labelling
• adding details
• only space for 15 out of 18 territories atm
• finetuning colourisation/contrast
• finetuning the layout

And here are the promised contrast/shadow effect comparisons:
This is contrast to the max:
pashaila_contrastex.jpg

And this is shadow/light to the max:
pashaila_shadowex.jpg

[jfrazierjr]

I like the latter one, what little I could tell due to the size.

[jfrazierjr]

How about putting the flags down each side and the large text box still at the bottom? I am adhd and a little ocd, so the unevenness really wrecks my brain.

[Lyrillies]

Thanks a lot for your feedback jfrazierjr!
sorry for the size, since I was just comparing the options of the software I didn't want to use a full-size image. Anyway, I agree with you: the second effect (shadow/lights) is great and the map could probably use a bit more of that. Not quite as extreme as shown in the example though, for the comparison I simply put the bar to maximum and I think the lights is probably a bit too much like that.

As for the flags: Good idea! That could work... I'll definitely try it, thanks!