Hand drawn maps

Woo.  So I decided that for my hand-drawn map enlargement, that I would choose the continent of Kalimdor from the Video game World of Warcraft.  I choose Kalimdor because my final project won't have anything to do with big macro scale maps, and Kalimdor seemed a MUCH more interesting choice than trying to scale up (or down) a classroom setting.

Anyways, the picture in the link was the original.  I printed it out full size on a piece of .25" graph paper.  I had to adjust the gamma and exposure in photoshop in order to be able to see the graph papers lines, but this is what my map looked like :)

I apologize for the map being so...well...crappy.  heh.  I can't remember where I stored my scanner when I stopped using it.  If i can dig it up you'll get wonderful high-res pictures in the near future :)

This is the resultant.  A glorious 4 pages of Kalimdor, colored as close as I could to the original Warcraft artwork, as each "zone" (like a mini-country) has it's own unique terrain and color scheme.  I tried to use color as appropriate - Winterspring, in the Northeast, is a full-year arctic style climate (and so I left it white!), whereas the Barrens and Durotar, in the center of the continent, are much drier and arid.  I used two shades of green for this map because many of the zones in Kalimdor (and the whole world, named Azeroth) are forested or plains-type, so it made sense.

Again, I'll try and find some high-res way of scanning and/or getting it into my PC - this is just to show that I did it, and how cool it is :)

This is the two maps side by side, so you can see that I really did enlarge them :)

Pen tool practice/proof to be posted later, I can't find my image, and I have to leave for work in 5 minutes!

Comments

[Tad]

I like the idea of video game mapping... I'd love to do a map of some classic NES game-- Zelda or Super Mario Bros., preferably...

As for the problem of the reproduction, there's a few things you could do that might make up for the lack of the scanner. 1) Your lighting seems to be part of the problem. You want stronger light-- although slightly indirect lighting is ideal. 2) Do you have the little flower thing on? Because that helps. As does stabilizing the photo on something-- ideally a tripod, but barring that, even resting it on a pile of books or something can help. 3) Since you seem to be a bit far away to get good resolution, you could try taking multiple photos and stitching them together. 4) Playing with your levels and contrast in Photoshop might make it "pop" a bit more, and cropping out whatever the surface you're photographing this on-- is that your desk?-- would probably actually help as well.

Just a few possibilities, things I might try, YMMV, of course.

[Chris]

Hooray for WoW! Nice job on the scale-up of your map. I think that's an innovative (to me, anyway) technique for enlarging things. Thanks for the tip.