September-October Challenge: Favorite Sites of "Nasties" in NY Moviedom

[NeonKnight]

Mayhaps a slight 'glow' around the lettering? Something to help someone to see/read them?

[Aval Penworth]

I'm not feelin' it so far. What was your idea behind the colours?

[Crayons]

Colours. Argh.
Simplistic reasons really. It's a city, so grey. It's water, so blue. Keep them light to allow stuff on top to show better.
Red text in Chiller font, blood and so on.
Dark blue for subway stations, it seems to be kinda standard.
It's a utilitarian approach, I suppose. In the back of my mind I have that tourist map thing. One of those fold out things in about A4 size you get from a tourist information centre. SImple colours for clarity and cheap printing.

You're right, colours. Hrm, back in a tic...


(The subway station symbol is tunnel shaped with "The Scream" for a bit of fun. )

[rdanhenry]

Bayonne Bridge has an "it's" for "its" error. If you're still switching text around in general, I'll hold off on checking the rest for now. I don't really like the red lettering. That'd be a fine font if you were doing slasher horror locations, but these are largely monster films. Something a little less "spattery" in green would be my choice. You might also want to see if you can thin down the line between land and water (depending on the colors you use for land, you might not really need a line at all), because where the line crosses your drawings right now, it detracts a bit from those wonderful monster+building pics.

[Crayons]

"It's" and "its" always catch me out however hard I concentrate! Thanks!
I'm probably going to reduce the font size to ease the crowding and reduce the amount of text to a minimum for the smaller buildings - enough to remind people what it is they're looking at without any of the embellishment.
The "idea" (such as it is!) is to wipe out the map underneath the text and cartoons much like this (after improving the text layout that is)
TEST3.png
which removes a lot of the "blank" areas of the map. That sort of effect will have to be at the end once the layout is done.

I'm still agonising over colours and whether to bang in a texture for the background map. I'm favouring taking the blue away from the sort of primary pale Cyan towards a more "complex" blue, still light but veering towards turquoise. The grey I can't really figure an alternative to. It is "city colour" and it acts as a balance for the brighter text and contrasty cartoons. Green font might lead me elsewhere...
I still like the Chiller font here as it has that oldies movies feel to it but as you say, it's "slasher" not "monster". Old monster movie posters have that stentorian sort of bold capitals.
You've given me a load to think about, thanks guys!

[Crayons]

I've been playing. Trying our some ideas like swatches. The main title font is a more "B Movie" style I rather liked.
TEST4.png

[Steel General]

I like the text in the right-most 'box', it is by far the easiest to read and for me it just plain looks better.

[Marken4]

Agreed. Simpler is better, I think you could just replace all text in the box (except the upper header) with a plain font. Probably arial or something. And by using lower case letters the text will be alot easier to read and people will focus more on the illustrations.

[Crayons]

Point taken. I'm not a great fan of Arial for this sort of thing. I think I've come up with a legible font that fits with the style (Amiene).
That said, I've not done a map like this before anyway, so... comments would be much appreciated - if not always followed to the letter (or font!)

### LATEST WIP ###
manhatten final 13.png

It's rather shambolic, which I sort of like, but then again, I don't have the skills of a Graphic Designer, so...

EDIT: Ah crud! I just noticed that whopper of an error in the left corner. Doh!

BTW: I'm trying a 128 colour optimised palette PNG file here so it's a bit squiffy

[Crayons]

I'm still fiddling with other methods and/or looks for this. I may post a few if you can spare the time to peruse? It may be the best version has elements of different proposals. Your help is very much needed. For example - if you still feel the font is not legible enough, I wanna hear it! The source document is massive and has about 30 layers so I can mess around with lots of things still.
cheers!
### LATEST WIP ###
manhatten final 21.png
(not so much "latest" as "alternate")