Malacandra

[Mouse]

I really hope this is ok, since the voting on the Lite Challenge hasn't finished at the time of starting this thread, but I really want to finish this map, and if I leave it even just a few days I might not get around to it, and it will never be finished. I tend to lose interest in stuff rather quickly if I stop working on it.

'Inspired by Malacandra' was an entry to the June/July Lite Challenge - map an oasis, set by Bogie, where I chose to make a map inspired by the novel 'Out of the Silent Planet' by CS Lewis - the first book in his Cosmic Trilogy, published in 1938.

This WIP thread is a continuation of the work that I felt I never quite finished for the challenge.

Just to recap, for anyone who doesn't want to read all the way through the challenge WIP thread, Malacandra (Mars) is depicted in Lewis's writing as having only a residual atmosphere remaining from the days of an interplanetary war between the respective deities that rule the planets. This atmosphere is concentrated in the canals of Mars (which at the time of the book being published had only just been dismissed as illusions caused by the relatively primitive optics of early telescopes). Lewis chose to go with the myth of the canals despite this new revelation, and he filled them with the remaining atmosphere of Mars.

The surface is barren. The ancient forests are petrified. The vast majority of the life on Malacandra is concentrated in the bottom of the canals, where warm water gushes from the rocks into the canals and keeps the local environment warm enough for life. The 'grass' is pale pink, the trees purple - the cliffs whitish green. From the bottom of the canals the visible tops of the petrified trees above them are like clouds of pink foam.

The colours were (and still are) a definite challenge for me - especially since I don't particularly like pink all that much! LOL!

This is how I left it:

Malacandra Final.jpg

And going back a few stages this is where it was when I was last happy with the colours (before the forests were added):

Malacandra 14.jpg

The two major changes/improvements I want to make to the map are:

• Getting the forests right so that I am happy with the overall colour scheme
  
• Making the island of Meldilorn larger, with respect to the description of it in the book, where it somewhat dominates the canal

Other things I could have done better:

• The path needs a way up and down the cliff
  
• Labelling is pretty poor
  
• I've considered call outs showing the different sentient life forms, but don't know if my drawing skills are up to it
  
• More detail generally.

[Chashio]

Looking forward to this.

[Wired]

Me too. Two suggestions/ideas: can you try to do the forests as they are in the second image? If you have these sort of individual trees rather than the texture mass in the first image they have a much better and greater visual impact, in my opinion (and yes, I know, that's probably a mountain of work...). The other is to try and add another layer for the water, either to make it darker at the center or make it lighter around the edges? Either way, I'm really looking forward to you working on this a bit more.

[Mouse]

Looking forward to this.

Thanks Chashio

Me too. Two suggestions/ideas: can you try to do the forests as they are in the second image? If you have these sort of individual trees rather than the texture mass in the first image they have a much better and greater visual impact, in my opinion (and yes, I know, that's probably a mountain of work...). The other is to try and add another layer for the water, either to make it darker at the center or make it lighter around the edges? Either way, I'm really looking forward to you working on this a bit more.

Thanks Wired

I wanted to do the trees that way, but I only had a day left when I made that decision, so the texture was the best alternative. I realise now that I could use a combination if I don't overpopulate the texture the way I did. I made it without any transparency. If I had spaced the trees out more and allowed the transparency in the texture, it probably would have looked a lot better than it did.

The water was another area I want to improve on, though I have to be careful I don't go too dark. The novel states that the water was light and bluer than blue.

All told, I took waaaaaay too long to decide how I was going to draw this map, so I only really had just over a week working on the final version.

I think that should be a lesson not just for me, but for everyone. The most important thing about doing well in a challenge is to make a firm decision about what you are mapping and how you are mapping it as early as possible

[Chashio]

I think that should be a lesson not just for me, but for everyone. The most important thing about doing well in a challenge is to make a firm decision about what you are mapping and how you are mapping it as early as possible

Yeah... I'm a goner.

[Mouse]

LOL! I just finished making a comment about how beautiful your current entry is. There's still a fortnight for you to work on it. Just... don't change your mind in any way that is drastic

[Chashio]

I will try.

[Diamond]

So glad you decided to continue this! Viva la Malacandra! (Or words to that effect.)

[Mouse]

Thanks D

It would just play on my mind if I let it beat me without a proper fight

[Mouse]

Now that I've stopped to think about this map a bit more, I realise that my visualisation was wrong. I'm currently trying to work it out.

When I first drew the basic path taken by Ransom (the protagonist), I didn't really have time to think in any great detail about the apparent contradictions inherent in the descriptions Lewis gives of the path Ransom takes, and the things that he sees.

For example Ransom is taken on a boat on what he describes as an ocean, or at the very least a very large lake. A bit later on the same day, and on the same boat trip, he claims to judge that the valley (the canal) is about 10 miles wide. I was having trouble understanding why he would judge a stretch of water that was therefore no more than 10 miles wide at most, to be an ocean, and to be unable to see the other side, when the sides are bound by cliffs that are presumably about 2 miles high, and therefore should be visible on both sides of the canal, despite the fact that Mars has a horizon distance of only 3.4 km (Earth's is 4.7 km).

There was also a scene just before the boat trip, where Ransom stands at the edge of a large clearing, then flees his pursuers down through the trees and suddenly finds himself on the shore of this very large lake/ocean. To me that means the lake must be considerably less than 10km across, since there is clearly a large swath of shore to one side of it, on which there is this clearing - a clearing so wide that Ransom can only just make out a distant waterfall. (its the moment he realises the vertical green and white structures are in fact cliffs).

So...

I'm currently redesigning the map so that the landing site is in fact in one of the junctions of several canals. These junctions show as large circular depressions on some of the early canal maps, which would be considerably wider than the canals themselves, and it fits a lot better with the story.

Changing subject slightly towards the practical aspects of mapping - I'm having a few problems trying to decide what kind of perspective to use, since I will need to show a much larger area than before, though I am hoping to have some kind of a rough sketch before too long.