Making Campaign Maps

[JVisgaitis]

Sorry I'm falling behind on this. New York Comic Con is this weekend, and I'm inundated with freelance work. Hopefully I can post the new update in a day or two...

 

[FunkBGR]

It's cool - Comic Con > all!

I've alerted my group to this thread, and some of them have decided to try their hand. I'll see if I can get any of them to post 'em. I was going to sit down over the weekend, but grad school applications caught up to me, so I'll to postpone it for a bit.

 

[catsclaw227]

Sorry I'm falling behind on this. New York Comic Con is this weekend, and I'm inundated with freelance work. Hopefully I can post the new update in a day or two...

I will start to follow along as well. I just downloaded the trial of Painter X and I ordered my Wacom tablet. They both look pretty sweet.

 

[kensanata]

(F) Import the bitmaps into Inkscape and use the Trace>Bitmap command to edge your ink drawings.

Can you offer some more details, here? I tried this yesterday and it was terribly slow and the result was terrible. What resolution did you use? I used my scan directly (over 2000x1000 px) and perhaps that isn't necessary. Did you postprocess the scan in any way such as reducing it to two colors? My scan was a pencil (not pen) scan, which I had then postprocessed streching levels until it looked pleasing to the eye – white background and near-black foreground. When I tried tracing the bitmap in Inkscape, what I got was in different shades of gray, and it looked as if it had been traced two or three times in some places. As if somebody had traced it twice with a 60% opacity gray pen. Perhaps you can share some of the bitmap tracing settings you used?

 

[helium3]

Can you offer some more details, here? I tried this yesterday and it was terribly slow and the result was terrible. What resolution did you use? I used my scan directly (over 2000x1000 px) and perhaps that isn't necessary. Did you postprocess the scan in any way such as reducing it to two colors? My scan was a pencil (not pen) scan, which I had then postprocessed streching levels until it looked pleasing to the eye – white background and near-black foreground. When I tried tracing the bitmap in Inkscape, what I got was in different shades of gray, and it looked as if it had been traced two or three times in some places. As if somebody had traced it twice with a 60% opacity gray pen. Perhaps you can share some of the bitmap tracing settings you used?

My drawings were first sketched out with pencil and then I traced the final image with an ink pen and erased as much of the old pencil marks as possible.

I scanned most of the images in parts, though the coastline and the waves were done as a single piece.

I always scanned my images to a resolution of 2048 X 1736.

When I did the trace, I used the single pass brightness trace usually at a setting of "0.55". I think you were using the grayscale multi-pass trace and yeah you're going to get something that looks really weird if you do that.

 

[kensanata]

When I did the trace, I used the single pass brightness trace usually at a setting of "0.55". I think you were using the grayscale multi-pass trace and yeah you're going to get something that looks really weird if you do that.

Indeed, you were right. I tried with 0.45, 0.55, and finally 0.88 and that was ok. I think I'll have to work on map features, however. The way I like to draw forests, for example, is by drawing lots of little n shapes. These are not readily filled with green... I guess I'll have to draw a few complete trees, filled with green, and assemble them into a brush. Then I can draw forests to my heart's content.

 

[helium3]

Indeed, you were right. I tried with 0.45, 0.55, and finally 0.88 and that was ok. I think I'll have to work on map features, however. The way I like to draw forests, for example, is by drawing lots of little n shapes. These are not readily filled with green... I guess I'll have to draw a few complete trees, filled with green, and assemble them into a brush. Then I can draw forests to my heart's content.

I need to look at the whole brush thing, though in general I don't like using stuff that ends up looking really repetative.