Hand Drawn Type

I was advised by my supervisor to create hand drawn type on my map for the title and a section of information on each building. I love that it is hand drawn because it has a more personal touch to it and in my opinion there is a more illustrated touch to  it. This is why I want to do hand drawn type and to have the title simple but lovely and the information too. I want to have the type light and just in black pen no colours as there is enough colours in the map and then the type will be overseen. I also want it to look slightly vintage and clean.

Here are some typography images I found that I found inspiring:

Some of my own sketches of typography:

The title would be “Walled City Map”

 

 

 

 

 

Other City Objects

Here are just a few of other city objects that I looked at:

Isometric

Roads

Roads

Towers

Walls

Street Lights

Street Lamp, Isometric

Street lamp, illustation

Roofs

The other main part that I have to look at is the roofs. The map shows a great amount of roofs and in my coloured design I have left out the colour of the roofs as I think if they are coloured wrong it can mess up the map. I am still not confident on what colour to colour the roofs or what texture to use. But my first step was looking at previous  done rooftops, here are my findings, they are mainly buildings from city ville and looking at the texture and colour on the roofs. I love the colour and texture used on these roofs and would love if my roofs would look even slightly as professionally.

Here are some images of roof top textures as well. I could also use these as texture filters and also colour references. However like the windows I many not go into this much detail with my building roof tops as there are loads and too much of this might look too messy. But I will defiantly try.

Here are some of my sketches of roofs:

Windows

So this is one of the main areas I have to look at fr my buildings there are loads of windows on my map and I’m not sure if I am going to do much detail on the windows as they are very small and it might be too busy looking. But to be sure I researched some windows anyway and found a collection of really lovely illustrated windows done for new York  There is a lot of shading done on these but they are also very simplistic. If I was to do more detail in the windows even in the photo shop file I would possibly do my windows like this. Depending on time as well though.

The colours are lovely and they each are individually designed beautifully. This is something I would love my buildings to look like but only if it wouldn’t make my map to messy. The windows are very small on my map and I may have to avoid doing this detail all together but for researching and design thoughts I had to do this. I have also included a image of a full glass building that was taken from city ville I included this as there are some glass areas to my map, e.g. over the door of the Richmond centre and this would help with colouring.

Here are some sketches of my own of windows, the first image of simple windows with not much frames work and the second is greatly inspired by the research windows.

Cars and Pavements

There are quite a few car parks in the old city and in my map there are also some cars. I want to add cars to the map to make it more interesting and add a bit of character to the map. It is like a maze and the small details make everything. That is why I’m looking at cars. I’m not sure what cars to do, isometric or realistic. The cars I have sketches are hand drawn but also very square and boxed.

Here are my research images:

Realistic

Pixel/Square

Realistic illustrated

Vector

Vector

Box Simple

I like the realistic illustration cars but also the simple box cars are very much like my own sketch of car on my map.

Here are my sketches:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pavements

Just two images of illustrator pavements. The pavements cant been seen very much on my map, very little actually and I wont know until I have my scan of my map in photo shop to see how close I can get to it to change it.

 

 

Trees

As my map is all buildings I have decided to take a look at some illustrated trees. There isn’t that much more in my map apart from buildings  however there are:

• Trees
• Cars
• Pavements
• Roofs
• Windows

As this is only a few I want to go into each find some research and do some sketches on them the main ones are the roofs and windows as these are what is on the buildings. I will try to find various styles and sketch a few, but only very little. This will show that I have looked at every aspect of my map

Trees

I have researched some vector, and illustrated trees to see if any would be of interest or inspire me for the trees in my own map. The trees I have drawn are sketchy and there wasn’t much thought put into them when I drew them so hopefully this will let me get a nicer tree/bushes for my map.

Favourite, Photoshop

Photoshop

Pixel

Photoshop

Pixel art

Drawings

Realistic/gaming

Gaming

Computerised

Realistic

Cartoon

Coloured

Isometric

Vector

There are many different style I have tagged them as to what they are. My favourite ones are the first three, realistic but still colourful. My most inspired one is the first one. It has the right colour, the trunk can be seen but it isn’t too vector, or isometric or realistic. I may not have this much detail in my trees as they are very small on the map and some can not be seen but the colouring is perfect. So I would use it as a reference image when colouring my trees.

Favourite, Photoshop

Here are some sketches I did of trees for my map:

A Few Thoughts

Outlines

When looking though the internet I cam across a lovely city illustration of outline buildings, I thought it was lovely and would love to do something like this if I had more time even just taking all the buildings in the old city and adding them together like this would be lovely. I know my sketches are properly coloured but eh ones I sketched out haven’t been. Just a lovely piece I think.

Amazing

Another outline design I found was on London, I took four or five of the main landmarks and using only the outlines added them together to create a lovely illustration. I know this is done so many times but it is very simple and lovely and the backdrop is perfect.

This next one was just done totally in pen, like my own and only the green roof top of this nearest building was coloured. I don’t know why but this is lovely there is some much detail in the buildings but the only colour is the top of the building and it still doesn’t take away for the rest of the image. The view angle is perfect too I would have liked to do something like this for my own map at some stage in the future too. Minimum colour but with pen outline the pen outline is much more sketchy then mine but I think that gives this piece character.

Outline

This image was very simply done and it is to do with a city and building and Isometric. I it a sketch on drawing a corner of a street on isometric. I would love if some of my buildings came with this detail but my map is about simplicity. My map may not seem like isometric as well as I drew it from a original and trying to draw it in isometric would take a long time but it isn’t far off and iv tried to keep the buildings square.

With my map all the buildings are very small and to get this much detail onto the smaller buildings might make my map allot busy, or messy.

 

Outline Buildings

I decided to do some research on the vector outline illustrations and found some really nice ones:

I then did this to one of my maps, it didn’t take long to do and it made a vast change. I’m not sure if it suits or if I like t as much as my original but it it a experiment. I could have done this a number of ways, using illustrator to create a line and then choose the width option to change the size of the line or I could have taken a section into 3d Max and created a spline for around the buildings and changed the width  and exported it out. I also could have done the 3d Max style but then brought it into illustrator and changed the size again but I don’t think any of these would have suited as this was originally a hand drawn map I wanted to keep it hand drawing and adding 3d max and illustrator to make the lines might have taken away from that. It also would have taken much more time. So I drew the lines on. To choose which thickness I should go for I drew a simple building in the same pen as the one I drew the whole map in (o.7) and took a rang of other pens and tried them over the pen over the map pen to see which one was the thickest  The result was a felt black pen which was very thin but had the best impact on the sketch. This was the pen I used for my map.

Pens:

Outline Map:

 

 

I have did this technique twice as I wanted to keep a original black and white but also do a colour study to see what it would look like. Here is my design:

Meeting with Supervisor

My supervisor loved the map and was surprised with the detail of the buildings. I do however think I could have done more detail to the buildings as my inspiration was city vile etc they had lots of detail but I am very happy with it and hope that when colouring it will let me do the more detailed parts. I was told to take away the free Derry corner on the map as it kind of takes away from the map. The map looks like a map as a set piece and the free Derry part looks off. I will remove it when I am colouring it in photo shop  He also suggested adding the diamond as a replacement, I don’t think I could augment the diamond even though it would be nice but I have to get this out of the way first and then the buildings I have sketched. I am however taking his advice and making it a main “building” on the map with the bold colours and illustrations. This will event the map up now with three on the east side, Tower Museum,  Guildhall and the  Millennium Form and three on the west side the Diamond, St Columbus Cathedral and the Heritage Tower.

My supervisor advised me to colour in the map in photo shop using the original map as a guild and creating a colour palette. This is what I want to do and will take my A2 map and get it scanned in DOLSOL and use in photo shop  I hope to get more colours and the whole map done and still have similar colours to the originals but a lot more colourful. The sub buildings would be more pastel colours and the main buildings would be pastel as well but more brighter pastels. This would make the map seem a set piece.

The map is the main thing everyone is going to see, it will be the first and not many will use the augmented reality so as a product this is very important. As the map is all hand drawn I want to add road signs and a title to the map. I would do this by using the same pen and hand writing the signs and title. This I think would be better then print type as the whole map has been drawn already and it is a hand drawn illustrated piece. I would scan them into the computer and using Photoshop add them in and resize them. I will then print off my coloured map on A2 and A3 as the A3 is the original product size and the A2 is more of a display piece.

The supervisor that is Genevieve’s supervisor wanted to see how I was getting on with my map and he liked what I had done. He also pointed me in some direction to do a illustrator outline on the the buildings. I hadn’t thought of this and wasn’t sure what it would look like but it is outline each building with a thicker black pen. but not filling in the details. Here is a example of what I mean:

 

 

 

I will try this with one of my A2 map designs.

Digital Painting Class

Later that day my supervisor had a class on digital painting it was how to create colour palettes and how to get shading and get a really nice digital painting. i have never done digital painting before but I would love to. I found the class very interesting and found some really good tips:

• Always when opening photo shop have a graphic tablet set up
• Scan your design don’t take a photo if you want to do a digital painting
• Work on a larger scaled of design then what the original is
• Never use pure black in your images
• Don’t have black outlines have dark brown, blue
• Try not to use multiply layer
• Use the opacity to help create shading
• Start with a base colour but have the opacity down and continue adding strokes but upping the opacity
• Have the brush size default to what you want the brush to be
• Always have a researched photo of similarity to what you are colouring so you can pick colours from it to use on your own
• If there is a centre piece to your design take time with it and the rest will just be quickly done as this would take away form the focus
• Always do the shading first and then add the lighting this will create a more wow change in your design

Colour Steps:

• Base
• Bit more base
• Shading
• Lighter/highlights
• Details

This was very helpful and I will take it into consideration when I am colouring my map.

 

A2 Colour

Once I got my copies I then wanted to colour one of the maps for Thursdays meeting. I wasn’t set on which colours to use for the main builds still as I had to go back to Genevieve’s designs as well  So I started with the rest of the buildings. I used my graphic markers to get more nicer colours and as they were the best that turned out in my designs. The colours I used was pastel colours as the main buildings are the ones that are meant to stick out more on the map. The colours used were pale pink,blue,peach and yellow. The trees were coloured in with a brighter green to add colour and bold to the map. I tried keeping the similar colours for the buildings as they appeared in the original map. Some may seem to far from the original colour but I love the map as it is. I didn’t colour the roofs of the buildings just the bases of the buildings as this is what I started out with but then I really liked the effect it had. The colours for the roofs are mainly blues, black, dark greys etc and I don’t want to add them to this map experiment just yet.

Colour A2 Map:

Colour Selection Palette:

Graphic markers and markers:

My Graphic Markers

Markers