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!

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.