September-October Challenge: The Battle of Long Island

[Gallifreyan]

So, for this challenge I'm going to make an 18th century style map of the Battle of Long Island (Aka Battle of Brooklyn). I'll be using the embedded map as the main source material.


Source: Wikipedia

No WIP yet, just reserving the idea. I'll get started once I am on the home desktop.

[mearrin69]

Awesome! I love military maps - have a ton of WWII and Civil War era books but, oddly, don't know much about the Revolutionary War. Looks like a tough battle. I'm assuming "we"* lost this one?
M

* "we" being the Americans, since I am one, just in case you're not.

[Gallifreyan]

We lost the battle, but won the war. I chose the Battle of Long Island because it seemed the best NYC battle for a map. BTW, I'm starting on the map about now, there should be a WIP today or tomorrow.

[mearrin69]

Sounds cool. Looking forward to it. BTW, *I* know we won the war but apparently my British co-workers do not...they refuse to acknowledge that we don't work on the 4th of July (although they do like me to send pictures of the crazy Yank pyros in my neighborhood blowing stuff up).
M

[Gallifreyan]

Got started on a map last night and now I have the some progress on. I don't think that the geography is 100% accurate, but as long as their are not a any big errors it is OK. Do you think that any features should be added or removed? I used the map in the upper-right corner of this image as the basis for the land.

If you know of any better maps that show the NYC from Brooklyn to Upper Manhattan w/o any docks could you please post a link to it?

Edit: I just thought about using the embedded image on the first post as the basis map.

I am thinking of putting the Battle of Harlem Heights also in this map. The Battle of Long Island took place in Brooklyn and the other was in Upper Manhattan so both should be able to fit together. I will put a divider (probably a straight or dashed line) on the map to separate the to battles.

### Latest WIP ###

[Gallifreyan]

I decided to use the source map as base for the coast. In the blank area to the right of the image I am going to write a background of the battles and/or a step-by-step overview of the battle.

Some acknowledgements: I learned how to do the woodcuts from a tut by RobA and the parchment background from Gidde's hand drawn map tutorial (based from RobA's tut), although a texture overlay and film grain was added, and I used a different color. The color was taken from a real map with the colorzilla add-on for Firefox.

I also put coloring on the coast showing the controlling power (red = British, blue=Americans). It switches from red to blue halfway through the map because Britain took control of New York after their victory at the Battle of Long Island. Should the color also go around the title boxes? I am going to desaturate the color later. The straight line in the middle of the map separates the two battles.

### LATEST WIP ###

[Gallifreyan]

Here is the latest update. I didn't like the woodcuts so much, so I went with rings. Any C&C?

### LATEST WIP ###

[mearrin69]

My only feeling on it would be fewer rings, though this is perfectly fine.
M

[Juggernaut1981]

Fewer rings... maybe "scatter dots" instead of solid lines...

[Gallifreyan]

I haven't been able to work on the map much because of midterms. But now I am done with them and have time to work on the map.

The main update is the addition of roads. Some of the parts of the roads look really pixelated, any way to fix that?

### Latest WIP ###