Graphic Progress

I found myself stuck in a rut on creation the City of Warten map. Not that I quit, I just set it aside in order to make some sort of progress. The graphic and writing tasks required to produce an adventure are recorded in a shared Dropbox folder. As a task is completed we simply cross through the task to show that the work is complete. Ideally, when all tasks are crossed out, the adventure is ready to be put together with InDesign for PDF creation which has another set of tasks depending on what the PDF is to accomplish.

An example of this might be a PDF used for advertising, or a PDF of adventure that will be sold for electronic distribution through DriveThruRPG.com. There is another PDF that would need to be created for Print on Demand services through DriveThruRPG.com as well. The nice part about this time around is that those are the only PDFs I can foresee having to create. This is because we are only creating the adventure for use in conjunction with Savage Worlds Adventure Edition RPG.

In the past we would have to do all those PDFs over and over for each ruleset we published for, OGL 3.5, Fantasy Grounds, etc. It truly was overwhelming and I have no idea how we managed to pull that off on top of my college education and work responsibilities of that era. But, I am digressing...

This week I designed a graphic called the Visserian Eagle. This device would be a primary device used by the Visserian nation for its military and government edifices. I chose to place it in context on a small banner. Once I developed the eagle and banner, I was asked to make the banner with a background color of red, instead of green to reflect the color being used to describe it by Dave in the adventure proper.

The next project was to come up with an ancient symbol to represent the long lost nation of Korrison. I developed a two part device that represented the five states that originally came together to form Korrison, then a central replaceable device that could represent various functions within the nation of Korrison. In this case a somewhat abstracted and symbolic graphic of an eye that represents knowledge.

My final progress this past week came via work with Adobe Illustrator using combinations of original brushes, graphic appearances, and effects, layered together in a very specific method. Creating this took months of effort to hand draw bricks, and hatchmarks, and discover a method for using them to make what looks like a convincing sewer environment. My question to those who read and see this, is does it look good for a floor plan of a section of sewer. Without using color and keeping this black and white for ease of printing, do you have any suggestions to improve?

On a more personal note I've completed a few more miniature painting tasks for the Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu game. After watching the painting guide set forth by Mattias Falck on YouTube from about three years ago I set out to paint the driver, doctor, and detective miniatures. I am not a big fan of exaggerated highlighting, so my work seems to be a bit more dark and sinister.

This is not to say that there are no shades or highlights, there are. I just wanted a more earthly appearance. Let me know what you think!

Learning is a Lifetime Endeavor

As promised in a previous post I have switched gears into illustrating sections of sewers for use in an adventure I am working on for White Haired Man. In this particular case I am developing a section of sewer that exists under the City of Warten where action, and encounters may occur. I prefer to draw my maps with Adobe Illustrator for many reasons, but the main one is how crisp the artwork remains despite scaling to smaller or larger sizes.

I have run into a small dilemma using Adobe Illustrator for this purpose. The software has undergone significant changes since I've last used it for developing map work. So as I jump into developing a concept for a location, I find that I have options that could improve my line artwork in a way that makes the lines look more organically drawn. I embrace learning new techniques such as this. Imagine a line drawn in Illustrator. It is straight, clean and unblemished, in fact it is a "perfect" line.



What I have discovered is that I can adjust the stroke such that it can be thicker or thinner on either side. 

By adjusting the width of the stroke, a feature that only became available in CS 5, I can make my lines appear more hand drawn. Not only that, but I can save these small sections of 'wavyness' as profiles for use on other lines in the future. I am always looking for ways to improve my workflow process and learning how to incorporate this technique has been at the heart of my work today.

To fully understand my interest I must share that I started using Adobe Illustrator when it was in its third version, or CS 3. Through my college years I adapted to CS 4 and CS 5, CS 5.5, and even CS 6. Now I design with a subscription called Adobe Creative Cloud and the current version is Adobe Illustrator CC 2020. Even though I have a long history of use with the software I am continually learning more features, some of which are pretty obscure like the one I am describing above. I wish I had discovered it earlier, but I think we learn what we need, when we need it for the most part.

I suspect that many technical fields that rely upon software go through this same struggle to keep up and master their tools. Taking it further, anything in life is worth doing well if you are to do it at all. Embrace the changes and the time you invest into honing your craft. It is time well spent.