Hawaii Dual

i'd personally like to see axo have a go at dabbling with a map at some time. I can tell he must be an artist with the feedback he gives and he has great taste in maps (east indies) :) @Clarke, it will happen bro. it's got the go ahead soon, i can tell it's going to be popular to play and it will have your name on it as something to be proud of. vgj, almost there.

There are still a few issues with the tweaking of colours, contrast, land coastlines and the badge which have been raised but not yet resolved. This just needs a bit of trial and error & feedback and response time. Rather than detail what's already been suggested / requested by the advisers here, I have sent Clarke a PM. Give him some time and I'm sure all outstanding concerns will be addressed.

Just a heads up, I have put about 5 hours of work into Hawaii Double today. You can probably expect an updated version Late Monday evening (my time) or Tuesday night. Thanks for all the support.

I'm glad you're working on it. Just don't put too much work into it before posting the version, you'd want to see how people react to it before deciding 100 percent.

The work I am putting in is the changes Aero asked me to work on in PM. Once those are done, I will post an update for all to see. :)

Okay I got some advice from Aero to build my map one layer at a time seeking advice and making adjustments until none of the cartographers have any more tweaks. So lets start with the 1st layer, the background silhouette. Here are 2 I love. One you have seen before and one is new. Do we like either of these better? I am open to either. If you don't like either and you are a cartographer and want to post one you prefer here feel free. But I would prefer to try to use one of these. Also, please comment if we are happy on the color chosen (hawaiian royal blue) for the background silhouette. Do you want it darker or lighter? Do we want the background more pronounced or more subdued or is it okay? PLEASE NOTE: FOR THE TIME BEING, IGNORE THE ISLANDS. WE WILL GET TO THEM LATER. And I know there is no texture over the background, we will get to that later also. THANKS SO MUCH!!! BACKGROUND A: [spoiler][IMG]http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e277/Richard_B_Clarke/D12%20Maps/Hawaii%205.2_zpsdu1d3zvq.jpg[/IMG][/spoiler] BACKGROUND B: [spoiler][IMG]http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e277/Richard_B_Clarke/D12%20Maps/Hawaii%205.3_zpsk4kt4hxf.jpg[/IMG][/spoiler]

background A I like between the two. background B, the clouds are distracting. The colors are pretty

I agree with hoodlum about the clouds. Distracting but even confusing since they aren't white. I'm not sold on 'A' though. 'A' might be a problem once you add texture to it because the ocean already has very defined texture. Is 'A' clip-art and 'B' a photo? To me a modified photo is going to look less cheesy than clip-art. Without seeing the original image I can't tell how easy or hard it would be to remove the clouds.

From what I can see, "B" is a colour replacement photo image and those clouds are a volcanic eruption coming from behind the palms. I agree with both that the clouds are what spoils this otherwise perfect image. Could you get a similar picture with a clear(ish) sky and turn it the same colours? Or if you know how, remove the dark clouds, leaving the rest. Also, this image is very textured but only covers part of the screen, so it might be better to reduce the opacity to make it less dominant when you add your texture layer.

Background B is the one he has been using all along. I wonder if the "clouds" are part of what has been a problem with the background all along but no one could pinpoint it as it was not as noticeable with the islands and texture and everything else.

When there is not too much to take-in in one go, it is far easier to pinpoint flaws / pitfalls of everything when broken down into their constituent parts. It could just be that dark cloud which caused the background colour to be too Rainy looking, but we will know that when amended. Colours are really important to the feel of the map too.

That's exactly what I just said to Clarke. He just got up and is getting ready for work and hadn't seen the comments yet, so I read them to him. Remember how it had also been mentioned about the texture not extending all the way down to the bottom of the map? It was this same background with the texture already in it and it just didn't show up over the sand area of the map. I know I saw him removing parts of the background from under the islands themselves and it made a huge difference on island brightness, once the darker image was removed.

Okay here is an updated BACKGROUND B from above. Open that one and then open this one and see if I did enough to move forward with this one or not. It turns out, the area around the purple and yellow islands which looks like dark clouds is really just plain blue sky. And the 2 areas to the lower left of the white and orange islands are white clouds. But putting the tropical blue filter over the background image causes an optical illusion where the plain sky looks like dark clouds and the white clouds looks like sky. Anyway, let me know what you think. BACKGROUND B2: [spoiler][IMG]http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e277/Richard_B_Clarke/D12%20Maps/Hawaii%205.4_zps54ix7cbr.jpg[/IMG][/spoiler]

That is much better, you will almost certainly have to drop the opacity when you add the texture, let's see it with the texture now, if you would? Those colours are much more vibrant and tropical looking. (Edit): I know the islands are for reference only, so as you said we should ignore the details of them for now.

While you were commenting on that Aero, I produced this. Is this better or worse? [spoiler][IMG]http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e277/Richard_B_Clarke/D12%20Maps/Hawaii%205.5_zpstzlasu1s.jpg[/IMG][/spoiler]