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If you want, I can send you a copy of a map I have made so you can see how I layered it in the program. You can't get an outline for a road with a single stroke, I layer them (sometimes 5 or 6 layers for a freeway) and it involves a bit of playing around to get ramps to line up, but I enjoy that.
Compared to most geofiction illustrators, I don't put very much emphasis on freeways. |
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Fordstone
This is the latest poster sized map that I have drawn. This map is from 2002 - 2004. Unfortunately it has a lot of water damage on the bottom from storage.
http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n...RDSTONEIII.jpg |
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Vid, thanks for the file. I downloaded Inkscape and it does remind me of Illustrator. I am looking forward to drawing maps in a new medium.
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It's a lot simpler than Illustrator, but more straightforward as well. Unfortunately doesn't update very often but it's a lot more stable than it was when I first started out. I haven't had it crash in a couple years now.
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really good stuff!^ I really like your hand drawn sketches.
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Kind of a quasi-related note, one of my big inspirations for doing hand drawn maps was when I stumbled upon this extremely detailed hand-drawn map of Gotham City from 1999, by Eliot R. Brown. I was especially thrilled when I saw that the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy used Brown's drawings as the basis for his vision of Gotham City:
http://batmangothamcity.net/wp-conte...ark-Knight.jpg http://batmangothamcity.net/wp-conte...map-750239.jpg |
These are all incredible. I hope you've posted them in other places so more people can see.
I'm just getting started. Here's a topographical contour map I drew freehand. I also have GIMP and Inkscape which I'll use later. Sorry about the bad scan, I don't know how to change the settings on my cheap printer. It's supposed to be an island that's roughly 40 miles long and 20 miles wide, a bit smaller than Oahu basically. Each contour is 100 meters of elevation, with the highest point being >900m above sea level. There will be a small city of about 350,000 at the mouth of the bay on the island's western coast and some small towns elsewhere on the island. I'm going to call it Vendia, I think. It's an obsolete name for a geological period so its probably not owned by anyone, and it also sounds vaguely latin or Spanish. Maybe the natives sold it to a European explorer for a gold coin or something, vende... So what now? I assume I'll go about tracing it, making a layer for each contour(a line+plus a filled polygon). I could use the filled polygons to do elevation shading, and overlay the contour lines over that? I don't know anything about mapmaking(I've used GIS, but not for anything you'd call art). It would be nice if I could use the contours to make a rough grayscale elevation map and airbrush in the fine details, and then use that to generate a colored elevation layer(maybe using levels and colorize, or something)? To make shadows do I have to paint them or is there a way to do a hillshade using some kind of artistic photo effect plugin? I want it to have a nice Rand McNally World Atlas look, then reduce the saturation and/or transparency of this layer and add road atlas type features to it, Essentially I want to make something analogous to one of those overly busy, multi-themed US state road map/tourism guides you can get from visitor offices. It will be a huge stew of information, roads, rails, urbanized areas, to natural features, etc. I imagine the final result will be a humongous image. http://i.imgur.com/pDJO68V.jpg |
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Topo Maps
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Not hand drawn, but inspired by this thread. Could probably use more detail though.
http://i.imgur.com/siKq8RJ.png |
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http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__.../Malla_map.jpg http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__...is-streets.jpg http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__...polis-rail.jpg http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__...lis-subway.jpg |
All really cool, guys. When I was still in elementary, middle, high school I would always kill time by drawing maps. Kinda put that hobby away once I got to college, but when I took Computer Mapping and Graphics in the spring of 11' (never actually got to finish the class due to the tornado) I kinda got back into it. Unfortunately, most of the stuff I had done got lost with my crappy flash drive that died one day. I think I'll get back into it, though.
Question, though. In the CMG class, we used Illustrator, so I'm familiar with it and have access to it on camps; however, once I get my Master's I won't have access to it. Is it worth it to go ahead and use Illustrator? Or should I use one of the previously mentioned programs like InkScape? I think I'm more interested in doing regional maps. |
Inkscape is free. Illustrator costs hundreds of dollars. But Inkscape, compared to the latest version of Illustrator, is pretty limited in some ways. The menus are organized differently, and the shortcuts are different. Since Inkscape saves in SVG instead of a proprietary format, Inkscape is compatible with Adobe Illustrator 9 and better, with few limitations. It has some issues opening AI files but 99% of the time it works out OK.
This is a quick read for those looking to switch to Inkscape Inkscape uses less RAM than Adobe products (in my experience) but really large, detailed files (some of my maps have as many as 10,000 objects) will cause the computer to lag. |
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Wow, there's some absolutely incredible stuff posted on this thread! Keep it coming!:tup:
Easky39 I love how big, detailed and colourful your maps are! I too used to think that I was the only one who did this crazy stuff, and people always thought I was weird for doing it. I've continued to hone in on my style since I was a kid, but now that I am almost an adult I find I have less time to work on my maps. However my obsession with maps, and urban development has inspired me to become an urban planner, and I am beginning my education in the fall! :) I started my own thread for my maps a couple of years ago, but I might as well share them here as well. All of my maps are hand-drawn and coloured, and are usually on one or two pieces of printer paper. Here's some of my work: This was my first, and so far only, attempt at a Japanese city: http://i1141.photobucket.com/albums/...atles/scan.jpg This is a city in France http://i1141.photobucket.com/albums/...tles/scan3.jpg This is a German city on Lake Konstanz http://i1141.photobucket.com/albums/...GermanCity.jpg Here's a Finnish port city http://i1141.photobucket.com/albums/...tles/scan5.jpg This is an Italian city on the Adriatic Sea http://i1141.photobucket.com/albums/...talianCity.jpg And this is probably my best map so far. It's a city in Southern Ontario: http://i1141.photobucket.com/albums/...s/NewImage.jpg This thread is very inspiring, and it's given me some great ideas for improving my work!:) |
BoiseAirport: I remember those adaptations from Nolan's Bat-trilogy very well indeed. The neighbourhood names from the first of those maps were retrofitted in between the ones in Eliot Brown's map by Grant Morrison in the comics. Which certainly made sense enough, given Morrison's drive to find a way to fit as much of everything ever done into the DCU as best he could.
What bothered me somewhat was Nolan - or whoever made the relevant choices on his watch - not returning the courtesy to the source material in kind. Certainly, it was his choice to make either way... Wishing that Metropolis had gotten the same treatment back in the day. A Hagstrom or MapArt/Routemaster-style street map of the Big Apricot would have been a joy to behold. |
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...ps6423f655.jpg
Here's an incomplete map. If I get to far out from the CBD I get kinda bored. :haha: Imagine the guy as a Sugarloaf Mountain type obstacle and the city grew around him. |
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