March 2021 Challenge: East Wickham Resistance Map

[jshoer]

When the Groundbreakers hit, the big cities and military bases mounted a concerted defense against their soldiers and exoformers. But they hit remote places, too, including way up on the Atlantic seaboard. After the first wave knocked out our electronics, Tom's road atlas became our central planning tool...

I resolved to enter this challenge no matter what it was, and I'm going to try something a bit layered. I'm drawing a midcentury-style road map of a coastal Maine town...then scribble on top of it as the locals catalog alien invasion pods and plot out their resistance. I'm using my midcentury drafting tools.

Here are map outlines and folds inked in, and if you can make out the pencil it indicates coastlines, hilly areas, and a few highways.

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[jshoer]

It's a sleepy little town. The tourists on their way up to Bar Harbor don't even notice it. So giant knives falling from the sky to stake themselves in the granite, well. That's a bit unusual. When the power went out, it didn't matter much. We just got out the kerosene lamps.

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I'm really glad KMAlexander brought up Sarah Bell's font on his nautical map thread, because it's perfect for this!

[Adfor]

Loving this so far, this is sure to look authentic when it's done.

IR

[jshoer]

Question: did I make a mistake in adding individual buildings outside the built-up area? I'm not sure that was the right call. I'm thinking I might not do any more buildings this way, and digitally erase the ones I've done so far.

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Edit: I suppose I should explain where I'm going with this, and why I think I don't want the buildings any more. After I'm done with the base map -- which I expect won't be long now -- I'm going to start scribbling on it, as if members of the local resistance were using it. I plan to mark two or three alien exoforming ships with surrounding altered environment zones as the most prominent features. Other things would include safe houses, supply caches, and assault or defense plans. Then, after I get the thing digitized, I will add in labels from the "original" map underneath including towns, roads, landmarks, and so on. (I'll also do other things like add shadows to emphasize the folds and smooth out my marker coloring.) So, I expect this will get busy pretty quickly unless I scrub those buildings out.

[jshoer]

There was absolutely no warning the day of the invasion. The Groundbreakers came in waves, with the big ones disgorging alien troops in cities. They knifed down into the rock, leaving huge scars. The nearest troop carrier to us was in Bangor. Next came the Exoformers, which we hated even more. They blasted out waves of energy that...changed...everything inside their radius. We're still trying to figure when they blow out, but it sure seems like they'll do it again. I wouldn't want to be inside the radius. Lots of the folks downtown came out to the houses and farms on the outskirts, and we started laying in for the winter.

This was supposed to be an alien invasion, right? Well, let's fight back!

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[Tiana]

A chilling story-map.

[KaiAeon]

Really cool

Sent from my SM-A315F using Tapatalk

[jshoer]

Thanks!

The town of East Wickham proper got devastated in the initial landing. We used the town as cover to launch an attack on one of the Groundbreaker ships, but...well. I don't much want to talk about that. At least some of them got out the same way. Practically the rest of the town got engulfed in the next exoforming burst. But before that happened, before we even knew there would be another burst, at least we got a win: we blew the Route 1 bridge, so the aliens couldn't use that in ground movements any more.

I scanned it in and did some touch-ups, and started experimenting with text labels. What you see here is with the text layers set to Multiply and 80% opacity, but I'd love to have some suggestions about how to better integrate the text with the hand-drawn map. I also want to clean up the marker a little on the parks and ocean, and add shadows to go with the map folds.

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(By the way, there is no Rt. 36, Rt. 42, or Penobscoggin River in Maine. Rt. 1 really is the coastal highway, though. References to real places put this fictional setting somewhere Down East, a little northeast of Acadia National Park.)

[jshoer]

A little work with the levels helps, and I'm making some more progress with labels.

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[jshoer]

I'm trying to move efficiently on this one...but sometimes, coming up with names is the hardest part for me! Especially when I'm trying to mimic real place names.

A few more labels, some touchups to make it look like my ink sits on top of the text layer, and this time I hid the palette.

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