My Pirate Map

[WillyWombat]

A few summers ago my sister turned 18 and wanted a big pirate themed birthday party. We worked together on a crazy in-depth treasure hunt in a park we could get a reservation at. This map stylized the park as an island with the pirate ship on the lower left side of the park representing the shelter we were housed under. Sadly, most of the wonder of the map came from the overlays and riddles scattered around the physical park... they made the party quite a bit of fun!

I hand drew the borders based on actual geography of the park, then added all of the trees, pathways, and styling within photoshop. A lot of the awesome artwork was pulled off of DeviantArt, so I wouldn't be surprised if you recognize some of it. I printed it at about 40in wide (big enough to be really big), but sadly it ended up printing a lot darker than I'd hoped.

So, any critiques would be awesome! I pulled a lot of shortcuts on this one because I was in a time crunch, but overall I'd love to know what you think I could do better on.

ScreenClip.png

(Also, how can I make an Album for my maps? It says my access is restricted. Do I need a certain number of posts first?)

[A.Woods]

So cool that you use the actually geography from the park to make this map, really really neat idea. Glad to hear the treasure hunt worked out. I like how stylized it is, the burnt edges, blood stains, aged/distressed look, and general stylization screams PIRATE to me. Great job!

[WillyWombat]

Thank you sir! It made for a fun walk around the park with map in hand, that's for sure.

[Ghostman]

That's an excellent map, I think it looks like professional art.

[Lingon]

That's really cool, great use of the stocks. I think the blood stains and coffee rings are a bit unnecessary, but I guess they are fun on a party map The print probably turned out dark because the image is in RGB mode, go to Image>Color Mode>CMYK and it'll print better (but not show up correctly on all monitors, so it's safest to keep a copy in RGB mode too!).

[Bogie]

Great map!
Lingon is right about the color mode affecting the darkness. I find that when I print a map myself ( inkjet) I need to lighten it about 25% and when I use Staples Printing ( color Laser ) I need to go at least 50% lighter.

[- Max -]

Whenever you'll go in CMYK, a print will 90% of the time be darker than what you see on your monitor (due to monitor light inner reflection - though more or less depending the level of dark colors used). Once you'll have a few prints to compare with your monitor screen, you'll get used to it and be able to check lightness/luminosity on your works before the print.

[WillyWombat]

Thank you much for the kind words.

I did end up sending a CMYK version to the printer, but as Max said I just didn't have any comparison to be able to convert monitor to print brightness. It also totally depends on the printer and paper used... everything was new to me. *shrugs* I'll have a better idea for future maps, for sure.