AuthorTopic: [WIP] E-arth  (Read 2959 times)

Offline Hidoshi

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[WIP] E-arth

on: April 09, 2009, 10:46:30 pm
Yes, I do mean earth.
I'm busy for my portfolio website atm and I've decided to make my 'home' page, my actual home. As in planet Earth.

Here's the reference


And here's my image


Btw Alaska and Spain are 'done'. Don't really like Spain yet though. The rest is just a basic for what it's gonna be
Please comment, positive or negative, all is welcome.
« Last Edit: April 09, 2009, 10:56:27 pm by Hidoshi »

Offline Squiggly_P

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Re: [WIP] E-arth

Reply #1 on: April 10, 2009, 07:23:21 am
You might want to look into some more reference that has some of the topographical information you might be able to show on such an image, but then it all depends on what your goal is for this.  Are you going for a realistic sort of image, or are you going for a stylized / exaggerated feel?  You might not be able to see mountain ranges in that reference, for instance, but it might make the image more interesting to look at if there were some more speciic details on the globe.  Right now what you've got in Spain is just noise, really.  Are there mountains there?  Forest?  There's a dark spot in Africa with some more pixels dotted around it...  what is that spot?  It might be more appealing to visitors to see something that would represent what those areas actually are.  The piece is also really large, which is great if you think you can pull it off.  I don't think I'd be able to.  You might want to think about cutting the resolution in half, but then if this is a website image and you want it large then more power to you.

For the record, the bit you call Alaska is actually Greenland + some of Canada.  The little white dot below Greenland on the ref is Iceland, which you should add.  Madagascar and Japan should probably get on there as well, tho I'm probably just getting ahead of myself.

Bottom line:  If you're gonna try to make this look reasonably 'real' or detailed or accurate, I'd suggest getting some more ref so you'll know when to break from this particular reference and add maybe the odd detail that might not be all that evident on that image (like the Nile, which is a pretty huge landmark, but isn't very easy to discern on that ref.)  And I'd suggest blocking out the land masses - especially the shorelines - with a lot more accuracy before you start jumping into detailing much of anything.  Getting the outline and proportions of a landmass right is key to making it recognizeable.  India / China / Russia shoreline is pretty far off, The mediterainean area could use a lot of work (Italy is there, but doesn't look like Italy, Greece is missing entirely).

Simple world map: http://info.comegoogle.com/phone/world-map.html

Offline Hidoshi

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Re: [WIP] E-arth

Reply #2 on: April 10, 2009, 10:25:03 am
Wow thanks for this great comment!
I wanted to make a world which is in between cartoony and realistic actually, since I might not be able to pull full realistic off.
Might sound a bit strange..such a style, but I'm gonna try it. It's semi-detailed.

My idea was to make a globe which has Europe on it, since that's my home, but all the space pictures from earth are showing Africa, America or a lot of clouds.
The good thing about this ref was that is is already spherized (unlike a world map).
But I'll first get the shore lines good now, so thanks ^_^

Offline JJ Naas

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Re: [WIP] E-arth

Reply #3 on: April 10, 2009, 10:40:15 am
Why don't you install Google Earth, then you can rotate it to any angle you like and take a screenshot of it.