Fifth Book: Map Making Continues
About a year ago, I started working on a map to benefit my Fifth Book. It was crude to start (seriously, check out that image below), drawn entirely with pencil, and made exhausting use of a ruler or two. Sadly, it quickly imploded.
Here’s an excerpt on it from last August:
“[S]omewhere along the way, I… managed to completely screw up the conversion scale not once, not twice, but three different ways. I first noticed it when a house I had drawn with my initial conversion was vastly outsized by a normal car. Thinking this was a fluke and one that could be easily corrected later, I moved on. Only then to find the cars also somehow larger than a semi-truck.”
Well, this past week, perhaps reeling from my decision last post, I bit the bullet and took the drawing out of the folder I’d buried it in shortly after writing the above and got back to work. This time, though, I played it smart and started building the image from scrap with GIMP. Not only did that make the process faster, it also allowed me to better refine the scale of objects and rotate/relocate items as I saw fit. It wasn’t long before I realized the result was a vastly improved layout.
However.
Let me tell you, scale is a pretty funny thing. If I’d gone with the original, I’d have had something like a junk yard filled with house-sized cars. While amusing, that, of course, just wouldn’t work. Which was the original issue. But, because I’d had it so wrong back then, a solid quarter of the map then is closer to a sixteenth now, necessitating a great deal more thought as to what I want to go into the design.
Overall, I’d say I’m about halfway through, but I’ve probably a long ways to go before it can be considered final. Still, getting to ask myself, “What the hell else can I throw in here?” has proven more than entertaining enough to keep on keeping on.
Here’s an excerpt on it from last August:
“[S]omewhere along the way, I… managed to completely screw up the conversion scale not once, not twice, but three different ways. I first noticed it when a house I had drawn with my initial conversion was vastly outsized by a normal car. Thinking this was a fluke and one that could be easily corrected later, I moved on. Only then to find the cars also somehow larger than a semi-truck.”
However.
Let me tell you, scale is a pretty funny thing. If I’d gone with the original, I’d have had something like a junk yard filled with house-sized cars. While amusing, that, of course, just wouldn’t work. Which was the original issue. But, because I’d had it so wrong back then, a solid quarter of the map then is closer to a sixteenth now, necessitating a great deal more thought as to what I want to go into the design.
Overall, I’d say I’m about halfway through, but I’ve probably a long ways to go before it can be considered final. Still, getting to ask myself, “What the hell else can I throw in here?” has proven more than entertaining enough to keep on keeping on.
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