November 2007 Entry: Superstition Valley

[Gamerprinter]

This is seriously beautiful, GP, but the perspective of the mountains in the distance looks a bit off. Maybe make them a little smaller and lessen the opacity a tad? Not sure. I can't believe the mountains are modular. Great work!

This was just a preliminary rough draft, rather than anything towards a final layout - the river is permanent, but that's about it in this last image.

Ravs, you do have a point though, perhaps I'll just make the outline edges of the horizon mountains and remove the surface texture of lines and shrink it down about 30%.

In a way, I don't want to be too accurate in the perspective, in that I don't want to create "dots" for elements that are too far away to discern. No doubt most of the mapping detail will be from the top third down, as anything north of the top third will just be too small to view.

I also thought about placing a tiny city on the horizon with a label like Tuscon 200 miles north or something like that...

[pyrandon]

I also thought about placing a tiny city on the horizon with a label like Tuscon 200 miles north or something like that...

I think that's a nifty idea! I'd at least try it out!

[ravells]

This was just a preliminary rough draft, rather than anything towards a final layout - the river is permanent, but that's about it in this last image.

Ravs, you do have a point though, perhaps I'll just make the outline edges of the horizon mountains and remove the surface texture of lines and shrink it down about 30%.

In a way, I don't want to be too accurate in the perspective, in that I don't want to create "dots" for elements that are too far away to discern. No doubt most of the mapping detail will be from the top third down, as anything north of the top third will just be too small to view.

I also thought about placing a tiny city on the horizon with a label like Tuscon 200 miles north or something like that...

That's the really hard trick, to make it 'not quite' accurate, but enough. I had this problem with the Glass Ocean challenge. In retrospect, I wish I had projected a non perspective picture using bryce onto a sphere or a plane and used a perspective view; just to help me with the construction.

Might be worth a try?

Ravs

[RobA]

I have found that sketchup is great for perspective mock-ups, just substituting in primitive solids in place of the final shapes.

-Rob A>

[Gamerprinter]

Hmmm, that's interesting!

I'll honestly say, that I do most of my "mock ups" in my head for most everything. In this case, I wasn't sure I had enough Mountain Mods I'd need to fill the map, but my little mock-up, showed me I had plenty. (This is one of the only "mock ups" I ever felt was necessary for my work.)

On a professional level however, mock-ups are important to show a WIP to a client. I'd seriously consider Sketchup for that type of situation.

Something to think about anyway! Thanks for mentioning it, Ravs and RobA...

As much as I work with 3D, I should have thought of this. However, I do have some reference maps in 3/4 view and they are providing the hints I need for proper perspective. If I run into trouble though, I will run to my 3D app and give this a try!

[Gamerprinter]

OK, this is my first attempt at "painting" the color into the web objects. Call me, unconventional, but I used Xara Xtreme to "paint" the color in.

First I found a nice photograph of a desert southwest canyon and used a color picker to choose about 16 colors from that photo to build my palatte.

Then I converted the line art into a transparent PNG file and imported to Xara.

I began drawing freehand shapes for each of my colors going in layers from a base color (yellow tan) and building from there. Some of the color layers are beneath the black lines, whereas some are above. The cloudy gray and the dark brown are above the black lines with a transparency about 60% applied.

All the colors have transparency.

Anyway, critique me on my colors and usage.

Question: what is the optimum size for web objects for various software and are there needs for different scaled versions. I know CC3 can use different scaled objects?

Anyway, here's the WIP of my first attempt at applying color...

[ravells]

Will the modularity still work with the colours? These look beautiful.

[Gamerprinter]

As long as I maintain the same color palatte and continue to use the colors similarly by layer and strata as in all the map objects, I think it should work as well as "black and white".

Of course, once completed, I will also save the black line only PNG file and cut the map objects in same modular chunks.

I still have to make several more Mountain Modules, Danger Sign, Oasis, Railroad tracks, plant objects, ground fills and an Apache Wikiup (grass teepee) for objects to create.

One problem, recall the issue about objects in upper third will be too small to view due to perspective and distance? The railroad tracks are all in the upper third area - that is the Santa Domingo Trail is that open space that is just in the foreground from the distant horizon mountains and the railway spur will be going from this railline just into the valley, but far away from Orion Hill, so the tracks will be small...

[Gamerprinter]

No WIP today. I've painted about half the existing web objects, so far. I want to finish painting, properly scaling all my objects in all three formats - black line only, black and white, "watercolor painted" line versions.

I need to create the final map objects required for the challenge, mainly railways, a warning symbol and an oasis.

I intend to create a "long distance" railway, really more of a symbol line than a drawn graphic, as well as straight and curving track sections for closer versions, though I won't be using these in my final map. To enhance the faraway tracks, I plan to place a "train" on the tracks as the symbol graphic.

Warning symbol - thinking of a human skull, with a cavalry hat on a post with feathers.

Oasis... hmmm, in the desert southwest, waterholes are pretty rare. More often than not, water is found in a "tank" which is a hollowed surface rock located in a shady area within a dry canyon. A pool on a large rock is called a "tank". So, staying accurate, this will be my version of an oasis for this challenge.

Oh, and for the Mission of San Pedro, I found several mission images where they are painted a light pink in color. I thought, pink is not my favorite color, but how often is it proper to use pink on a map - probably rare if ever. So I'm creating a pink mission, just to be both accurate and strange!

So, I'll be busy accomplishing this over the next couple days, so I won't post a WIP until later this week.

I'm not taking a day off or anything...

[Gamerprinter]

All web objects drawn so far have been "watercolor" painted in Xara Xtreme, cut into their individual shapes and exported to PNG format. I exported at their respective sizes at 150 dpi, 16 color with alpha channel.

Test for me, to see if I need to create large dpi/scale for any of these images.

I still need to create cut objects in line art and black and white format, yet - since the color would be more difficult and time-consuming, I did them first.

I will be uploading all my painted terrain objects today, not structures or plants yet, just mountains/mesas/hills/buttes.

In this first batch, I'm uploading buttes...

WIP (these are finished objects - short of rescaling)...