8 replies to this topic

[razornole]

Hello all,

Well I finally got back to working on my Nez Perce series, and had a blast mapping this one (though I probably spent way too much time on it). This is going to be the frontispiece of my clients book on the Nez Perce War. I'm primarily a thematic cartographer more accustom to mapping rows and columns of data, so this reference cartography is kinda new and experimental to me. Well visualization is visualization no matter how you look at it.

Programs used for this are CS3, MApublisher, and ArcMAP 9.2. I've tried to get this down to the basics, but the basics are overwhelming. I'm in the process of trying to talk my client into a frontispiece for the back with this same map that primarily shows the physical geography, so I have left most of that off of this map. However, for those of you more familiar with the territory, let me know if I have missed anything or screwed something up.

Thanks,
kru

Attached Files

•  Frontis_NPWar_1.jpg   518.55K   139 downloads

[Esther Mandeno]

Hello Kru,

My first thought was that it looked gorgeous like all the others. However, at least for me, the representations of the mountains remind me more of mullusks than mountains. I know this is a somewhat standard representation of hills or ridges but maybe it has to do with the contrasts? Maybe the ridge lines are too white? I could be totally off on this so please disregard if it makes absolutely no sense.

Sorry I don't know much about the history of the Nez Perce War so can't comment on that. But I do like the icons used for everything else. Oh, the territory boundary line might get confused with the "Nontreaty Nez Perce Movement" lines. I started following one of those lines from Canyon Creek and then ended up following the Idaho Territory northern boundary all the way to the Washington Territory!

Again, very nice work.

[razornole]

Hello Kru,

My first thought was that it looked gorgeous like all the others. However, at least for me, the representations of the mountains remind me more of mullusks than mountains. I know this is a somewhat standard representation of hills or ridges but maybe it has to do with the contrasts? Maybe the ridge lines are too white? I could be totally off on this so please disregard if it makes absolutely no sense.

Sorry I don't know much about the history of the Nez Perce War so can't comment on that. But I do like the icons used for everything else. Oh, the territory boundary line might get confused with the "Nontreaty Nez Perce Movement" lines. I started following one of those lines from Canyon Creek and then ended up following the Idaho Territory northern boundary all the way to the Washington Territory!

Again, very nice work.

Hey Esther,

Thanks for the comments, don't worry, what you see is what you see. I personally see trilobites but I might be coming from more of a geological background. None the less, a hillshade with a DEM overlay didn't work for this black and white map. I got my inspiration from some Civil War maps and Rand McNalley's 1895 map of Montana. They use this method to a degree, but of course all done by hand. They did a much better job than myself. However, I am trying to convey an antiquated feel to this map. I'll mess around with the gradient meshes tomorrow to see if I can't reduce the contrast some in some of the higher mountains. I did quantify my white colors with the hight of the ranges.
The state borders definitely need to be fixed. I hope that you are referring to the White Bird Canyon battle and not the Canyon Creek (if so I have done something terribly wrong). I most likely will drop the dashed looked all together. I was just afraid of my state/territory borders being confuse with the rivers (I should have realized what was more important in the VH). I wanted to use white but lost my state boundaries altogether in the Bitterroot Ranges.

Glad this is only a rough draft.

kru

[DaveB]

Excellent subject! One of the fun aspects of a project like this is the opportunity to learn a little about the subject.

Yeah, with the dashed lines for the movement of the Nez Perce and the Army (established in other maps throughout the book) it would be good to use something other than dashed lines for the boundaries.

Is "Nontreaty" the correct spelling? Should there de a dash between "non" and "treaty"?

[razornole]

Excellent subject! One of the fun aspects of a project like this is the opportunity to learn a little about the subject.

Yeah, with the dashed lines for the movement of the Nez Perce and the Army (established in other maps throughout the book) it would be good to use something other than dashed lines for the boundaries.

Is "Nontreaty" the correct spelling? Should there de a dash between "non" and "treaty"?

Tell me about it. I have spent almost as much time reading up on the history of the Nez Perce War than I have making these maps. Not only that but I have learned the name of everyone of those mountain ranges (although there are few around the Kettle River Range in WA I couldn't find info for). Geography is great.

Not sure with nontreaty, but that is how my client has spelled it so I am only following his lead. If we're wrong we'll be wrong together.

I have corrected the state borders. I wanted them white, but lost them on top of the mountain ranges, especially the Bitterroot. I dashed it with a very light grey and adjust the width, it works well I don't see how there can be confusion. I'm sure that I will post the updated/finished map soon.

kru

[ELeFevre]

Great map Kru! As someone already said, the non-treaty Nez Perce movement lines are easily confused with the territorial borders, but I'm guessing you've already fixed that one. The mountains really don't look like sea creatures to me. Trying to emulate a hand drawn style with a computer isnt an easy thing to do. Looking forward to the final version! Nice work. Erin

[Matthew Hampton]

Hi Kru,

Excellent map! I like how you used period elevation techniques to give the map an implicit time-reference. Most hachuring done at that time used strokes that were smaller in length.

Another technique that might look good is using oldtimey path symbolization where you intersperse text symbols b/w dashes (--+--+--+--+, etc.).

[razornole]

Hi Kru,

Excellent map! I like how you used period elevation techniques to give the map an implicit time-reference. Most hachuring done at that time used strokes that were smaller in length.

Another technique that might look good is using oldtimey path symbolization where you intersperse text symbols b/w dashes (--+--+--+--+, etc.).

Yeah, in hindsight I would have the hachures shorter but by the time I realized this I was well into the map (towards the end they got shorter but I tried not to make it too noticable). Each one of those lines were drawn individually. I traced a DEM that was categorized so I could have bases and ridgelines. What the hell it was a slow time with my small business, and I could afford to screw around.
I'm not sure what you mean with text symbols, but I'm not a fan of too many textures that force my reader back and forth to the legend.

Thanks for the comments,
kru

[Matthew Hampton]

I'm not sure what you mean with text symbols, but I'm not a fan of too many textures that force my reader back and forth to the legend.

I was just talking about some of the simpler ways different paths were draw on period maps. I don't have any examples in front of me, but cartographers in the 18th-19th century didn't have a stroke palette with 6 dash-gap attributes to create different line styles. Instead they used a variety of line-symbol styles, that we could reproduce with text symbols interspersed with hyphens. Her is a quick example of a few different trail (path) styles that I can quickly make with keystrokes.

---+---+---+---+---+
o----o----o----o----o
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
=============
--#--#--#--#--#--#


I'll try and find a good map to give you a better idea of what I meant. I think I know of one in a book by Fredrick Jackson Turner.