Experiment in progress, advice sought

[HBrown]

I decided I wanted to try making a map similar to some of the 18th C maps I'd seen on the web - the ones with caterpillar mountains and the country borders indicated in a band of color at the edges. I started with a fairly low resolution map so I wouldn't be too invested in it when and if it all went down the sewer. Here is what I have so far:

Candidate_02_tst.png

I should probably start off by saying I'm working in the Gimp. The map is a little greenish, but I can fix that in another version. The caterpillar mountains are crap. The technique I'm using won't work well on a map with this low a resolution. I know there are caterpillar mountain brushes, and I have downloaded some, but can't figure out how to use them. If anyone can point me to a tutorial, or to other caterpillar mountain techniques, I'd be grateful.

As is often the case with my maps, I'm having trouble with labels. I deliberately picked a non-European font so I wouldn't get bogged down in names, but could focus on how the text looks on the map. The labels are unremittingly horizontal, and I'm unhappy enough with them that I stopped adding labels and put this up to ask for help. How does one decide on how a label appears? How do you pick the text size? Any advice on labeling would be welcome.

Any other suggestions would be welcome too.

Thanks,
Hugh

[Freodin]

A nice start, and a style that is very worth following.

Some suggestions that might be helpful.

"I wanted to try making a map similar to some of the 18th C maps I'd seen on the web"
If you want to go for a specific existing style, and you want to have others comment on it, it is always helpful to point at specific examples. Give names and dates - like "Hotzenplotz's map of Grandmotherania from 2265", or directly link to examples. For example, here is a black and white world map from 1860 using the hachure (caterpillar) style of mountains.

"I started with a fairly low resolution map"
To test a style, higher resultions are always better... scaling up is always an option, scaling down is almost impossible to do. If you don't want to invest too much work in a complete map... start with a smaller area, test your style, and only then do a complete map. (Again, as an example, a styletest I did for this type of mountains

"The map is a little greenish"
Err, yes, it is. Combined with the small size, it makes it rather difficult to judge anything.

" If anyone can point me to a tutorial, or to other caterpillar mountain techniques, I'd be grateful."
I'm working on it. Not very helpful right now, I know. Damn perfectionism.

"Any advice on labeling would be welcome."
For advice on the question of how to place your labels, this link is a perfect place to start. This is professional stuff, and you can't be wrong following it.

For advice on how to best create labels / curved labels / different label styles in GIMP... best way is not to use GIMP. Use a vector-oriented program, like the free INKSCAPE, and import the labels into GIMP.

[HBrown]

Here are some samples of the kind of map I'm talking about:
1706_De_La_Feuille_Map_of_Europe.jpg
1862_Stieler_Map_of_Europe.jpg
Carte_du_monde_de_1800.JPG
Map_of_Europe_in_1794.JPG

And here is my experiment from above, with color correction:
Candidate_02_tst.png

I downloaded Inkscape and will try to figure out how to use it this weekend. I'll try a higher resolution / smaller area experiment too. Thanks for the suggestions!

[Triceratops]

This is a really cool idea. I like the style of those maps as well. If you are looking to produce an inspired by type map, without duplicating something specific, lets have a look at the common elements.

Of the maps shown, here are the elements I see as being the same

• They are essentially black and white
• National boundaries are highlighted with transparent colour
• Two have the polygons filled in, two don’t
• They use fonts with serifs
• Shallow water/coastal waters are shaded with horizontal lines
• They have latitude/longitude graticules and borders
• Mountains ridges are lines and leeward slope is shaded with short horizontal lines

Your map has most of these elements already. I would love to see a larger image at the scale you have chosen.

[Hai-Etlik]

Sorry, hand is broken so being terse,

Graticule seems to indicate plate carree projection. Generally bad for finished maps. Has very unpleasant distortion. You map shows no such distortion which means the land itself is highly distorted on the globe. This sticks out like a sore thumb if familiar with maps.

Mercator or Stereographic hemispheres would fit the kind of map you are trying for better. There's still distortion (always is), but it's distortion that looks better, and hemispheres reduces max distortion by projectiong parts of the globe separately. Note that the examples you give have two regional maps, a world map in mercator, and a section of what appears to be a stereographic hemishere map,

[Freodin]

Sorry, hand is broken so being terse,

Sorry to hear about your hand... best wishes for a speedy recovery.

Say, would you be able to identify the projection used in the second map HBrown posted, the one from the Stieler Atlas?

[HBrown]

Graticule seems to indicate plate carree projection. Generally bad for finished maps. Has very unpleasant distortion. You map shows no such distortion which means the land itself is highly distorted on the globe.

Yes, it is plate carree. I usually start with plate caree, since it is easiest to change into anything else. If you notice, there is very little land in the map poleward of 60 degrees, where the distortion you refer to would be most noticeable. And the continent that does have land north of 60 does show the horizontal smear one would expect.

However, for the sake of this experiment, I consider that irrelevant. I'm more interested in developing the style, and always intended this map as a throw-away.

Following Freodin's suggestions, I have started another map, less than a whole world, where I am trying to improve upon the style. I haven't had a chance to learn anything about Inkscape, as he suggested for the labels, and Saturday chores call me (I thought I'd have time for my interests when I retired). Here's what I have so far:
18C_test_02.png

[Freodin]

Looking good.

Two things you might want to consider to get closer to the "real" style.

First, consider changing the colour of the rivers to black (or whatever tone you used for the outlines). All of the original maps you gave as examples where prints from copper engravings. These plates would only provide printsin one tone... black. Each colour had to be added manually. Watercolours (or whatever else the colourer used) would of course not be as fine and detailed as the engravings.
Thus, all fine detail, all linework would be from the black printing, and only the "area effects" would be coloured.

Second, for the same reason, consider changing the way you produce the colouring.
The colouring was done manually, for each single copy of the map.
You might notice that three of the four example maps didn't use full-area colouring, but only colours for the borders... either in a single or in two layers.
Also, manual colouring just isn't capable of producing this perfect gradient colours that a digital "inner glow" effect can.

So you might want to change the gradient effect that you are using to something more like a stroke or two sets of strokes.

But another thing with the colouring: even with great care, it would never have been as perfect and detailed as the engraving. Especially at fine details - small islands, fractured coastlines - the colouring usually doesn't follow the engraving exactly. You can see this effect clearly on the Norway coast on the first and even the second example map.

So using a digital "stroke" or something similar might be good enough for a good looking map... but for a real reproduction of such a style, I have yet to find a way that beats simply doing it by hand.

[HBrown]

Thanks, Freodin.

Are you suggesting something more like this?
18C_test_02.png

[Freodin]

Exactly! Did you just whip this up by hand or is there some nifty method to get the hand-drawn look that I have completely missed?