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.

Deadend Processes

I am deep into the project of design work for a map that showcases the fictional City of Warten for a current White Haired Man Design project. Recently, I suffered a setback where I chose to design with Adobe Illustrator and then port the work into my iPad device for work with Adobe Draw. I chose to do this because soon I have a surgery and I don't think I will be able to sit at my typical design station using my desktop computer. After a day or two of work, I ported the work back into Adobe Illustrator, only to find that my design was stripped of its layers, forcing all artwork into a single layer. This is not a major issue when working with vectors that are simple and have clean line work. However, my work had tiny areas that depicted side streets and frankly I could not get the software to break apart the sections without losing details. This was a frustrating dead end.

My next thought was to go back to the original file and start over and keep my work in Adobe Illustrator. Anyone who understands the difference between vector and raster image qualities, knows that designs in Illustrator can be scaled from the size of a grain of rice all the way up to sides of buildings and anywhere in between without loss of image quality. In other words the image won't blur or become 'pixelated.' However, the trade off is that you can't really paint with brushes as you would in Photoshop.

This led me to another attempt at process change. I ported my work over into Photoshop, thinking, I could utilize a homemade brush to create the feel of a city block randomly, without having to draw in every last building. Then when I was very satisfied with the look of the map I ported it back over into Adobe Illustrator, hoping that the large size of the file would allow me to extract and render it into vector format successfully...Failure! What a colossal use of time for no appreciable results. I am still left with a city that has only vague lines for walls.

I discussed this with Dave and he provided me with sagely advice, "Why don't you set it aside and work on something else so you can get some success under your belt?" So, I plan on doing just that today. I am going to switch gears and create a floor plan of a section of sewer for use in our adventure.

The takeaway's I offer for other business owners who find themselves at a dead end is to not give up. Keep trying until you find a way forward that is right. Don't shortcut you or your customers with something that is not right. After all, if owning a business were easy everyone would do it. So my advice is to just keep trying, and be patient with yourself. Allow time for failures and dead ends. You will learn from them and your offering will become that much better, or at the very least not as poor as it might have been.

On a personal note I found myself having a great time playing a new addition to my board game collection: Star Wars Rebellion. After two full, four player games over the last three days I can share that the 3-4 hour per game timeframe was not our experience. Rather, our games were lasting 7 and 8 hours apiece, which had to broken across Friday-Saturday, and then Saturday-Sunday.

I loved the experience of playing on both sides in different games as well. The first time I played the Rebels against the Empire. Holy crap it was so bleak, almost everything we did ended in further loss of territory and units. Yet, it had these 'cinematic' moments that were such fun and ultimately we managed to coax out a victory for the Rebels by biding for time. Then I played the Empire and felt the overwhelming power of materials and systems under my jackboot. Having played the Rebels the first time around, I angled my Empire to deprive the Rebels of advantages I had taken hold of before. In the end it was a crushing victory for the Empire! Both sides felt the struggle, and it was real and intense feeling. Aside from the long play time I give this game a huge thumbs up, even though the rules could use better organization. Having to decipher how to do things between two booklets and online search forays was not enjoyable. Fortunately my group was patient.

One final note. The plastic comes in light gray for Rebel units, and dark gray for the Empire. I added a Citidel Paints product, 'Nuln Oil' as a wash, to make them look better. After all who can resist painting 153 miniatures in a weekend...and now it's time to go back to work!

Birthing the City of Warten

This past week has included continued work on painting miniatures from Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu. The Shoggoths are now finished. I have also continued my work on preparing for an upcoming surgery to remove cancer from my body. I don't have a date yet for this surgery, but based upon the tests and feedback from professionals, it is looking like sometime in the next 1 to 3 weeks. Finally, I've also begun crafting a city to be central in a new adventure being created by White Haired Man.

I've started and restarted crafting the City of Warten three times now. Each new iteration gets me closer to the vision of White Haired Man's author, Dave. Our last discussion was spirited as I had developed a very detail rich test version of part of the city using Inkarnate. Inkarnate is a fantasy map-making tool that may be found at inkarnate.com. After using this software for about a week, I found it to be difficult to manage to use for city creation. It could be done, but, I reckon many of the assets used to do so, would need to be self-created. There are also no existing tools for creating lines or shapes that I could easily use to begin crafting so called city blocks. Now, I'd rather not flame this tool, as I found it likely that it would excel at regional area maps of a game world. Just not good at city creation at this time. Feel free to contact me with examples of cities made with Inkarnate to show me the error of my ways!

So, this past week I returned to Adobe Illustrator to begin blocking out sections of the city. Old original growth, second city growth, waterfront, the spire, and what lies beyond the walls of the the second city growth. What I have so far is just that, a rough concept map which I will share.

Blue is the water, brown is waterfront and at roughly sea level as the water. Red represents the old growth areas of The Spire, an island where the founders built the government seat and the older section of town that was built behind a sturdy stone wall. Note that both of these areas are to be 60' above the level of the water, thus creating a sharp cliff facing the water, and waterfront areas.

The second growth of the city came later and is also adorned with a more modern stone wall with regular towers set into it. This area is roughly the same height as the older section of town. Everything outside in green either does not fit due to current levels of population, or is simply unwanted.

With this stage approved, it is time to develop more details of this map. I use Illustrator for this so that I can hone into an area later and "blow" it up larger for creating more details. Perhaps a very small section within the city, etc.

For those of you who have skill at this type of endeavor, maybe you would be willing to share something of your process. I am always looking to learn more about creating fictional maps, as well as about the process others employ!

Map Elements Design

Aside from coming up with the locale for starting a new adventure, I find myself in need of developing features that will be utilized on future maps. Features such as a scale bar, compass rose, title and legend typeface choices. Over the past week I developed all of these things.

Here is my initial compass rose sketch:

While interesting I did not find it compelling and of course I still needed to address how to incorporate the typeface. This next compass rose is where I am at now. I chose an Adobe Typeface available through Adobe Font, titled Acme Gothic, Black. The final choice was to give the lettering a slight rotation, suggesting action and riffing back upon the earliest days of Savage Worlds design choices:

The scale bar seemed to just follow here:

My next goal is to create and collect an assortment of textures that I might use for brushes and map backgrounds, so that I might bring not only Warten to life, but all future White Haired Man maps. I want my work to appear as if created in a standardized way, a choice I did not make during our last run. My expectations are the more planning I put into map design elements now, the easier it will be to understand what I am trying to convey at a glance.

I look forward to hearing from others regarding my design decisions thus far.