WIP - The World of Ascadia

[RobA]

As a follow-up to my hand drawn regional map here I am also making a world map (for a different trilogy-in-progress) for the same author.

This was based on a rough sketch of the continent shape, inland sea locations, and political boundaries. I threw in terrain features to help explain the political boundaries, and bounced ideas back and forth with the author, coming up with this draft:
worldmap_working2_s.jpg

Agreeing on that, I have started the final map. It will need to be B&W suitable for printing. This has been done completely in Inkscape so far, making extensive use of the tapering river technique I posted in the tutorial section. (Here I differenced them out of the main continent shape):
ascadia_working2.png

View full size (2000x3000) as the rescaled pop-up doesn't do it justice.

Next comes terrain features...

-Rob A>

[jfrazierjr]

Very nice start. Can't wait to see more. Question on this for the printing: Does it have to be straight black and white, or can there be a couple of shades of grayscale in there as well?

Joe

[Badger]

Couldn't help it rob... but...

that looks an awfully lot like;
gossamer.jpg
Gossamer.gif

[RobA]

@Del - Funny stuff! I didn't think of that. I was thinking more of a "Timmy the Tooth" kind of thing.

@Joe - Not a clue! I assume books are all printed with offset printing. I have no idea if they can reproduce grayscale, or would be dithered B&W. I'm working on the latter assumption, but that could be wrong. Maybe a printer, publisher or author would know the answer!

-Rob A>

[Gamerprinter]

It really depends. For most books, B/W without grayscale is what you can expect - in order to keep the price down.

However, an illustrated book (coffee table book, book of maps, etc.) full color and grayscale and be easily printed, but these books as substantially more cost to print.

If you're talking about typical fantasy literature that comes in hardback then to paper back, B/W is all you can expect.

Compare this to full color magazines. You'd think the cover price of $3 to $5 covers the cost of printing. This is not true. Most full color magazines cost $10 - $20 to print each. The advertising placed inside the magazine actually pays for the printing cost. The cover price only helps defray the cost of distribution. Full color printing for books are very, very expensive. Print-on-demand is essentially printing full color with a color copier/printer for short run, costs are still high, but actually not as high as if they were printed on offset printers for large distribution.

GP

[RobA]

Thanks GP. The indication is it will be a typical fantasy hardcover, so B&W offset.
Size was passed on to me as:

Final print size will (hopefully) be standard hardcover, which is 15cm x 22cm pages, so with margins, we are looking at roughly 13x20 cm (roughly 5"x8")

What would you suggest the resolution of the image be for good B&W printing? My current image is sitting at 200dpi.

-Rob A>

[RobA]

OK - I need suggestions!

I have tried a whole bunch of mountain styles, but nothing that I am happy with, that portrays the sense of scale, and fits with the clean land/river style.

This continent is about the size of Australia. Here is a rough comparison based on the information I have:

rect2852.png

Any suggestion on how to represent the mountain ranges - again, using B&W only, would be helpful.

Thanks,
-Rob A>

[SeerBlue]

don't know if this will help, but for Raith of the FHCO we use 2 layers in Photoshop, bottom one black, top one white. He sketches in the shape of his mt chains in black on the white layer, and then uses one of the natural brushes in PS to erase the white from the white layer where he wants black. A pic is below. Don't know if this way is any better than just applying black to the white, but he gets better results this way. Don't know either if you can erase with vectors/whatever in this manner in ikscape.
SeerBlue and Raith Eliathy

[Badger]

OK - I need suggestions!

I have tried a whole bunch of mountain styles, but nothing that I am happy with, that portrays the sense of scale, and fits with the clean land/river style.

This continent is about the size of Australia. Here is a rough comparison based on the information I have:

Any suggestion on how to represent the mountain ranges - again, using B&W only, would be helpful.

Thanks,
-Rob A>

Here some ideas .... just thought I'd throw something up there for you .... was quick and dirty ... but you get the gist


YodA_mtns.jpg

[RobA]

Thanks for the suggestions.

I finally decided to go with something relatively easy to do in Inkscape, using the calligraphy brush. Somewhat symbolic, old school fantasy map...

ascadia_working3_resize.png

I still have to add hills, etc and some additional terrain, but this seems to do it without being too cluttered.

-Rob A>