Once again I find myself messing around with colour schemes for my 6-mile hex maps. Most maps on this wiki have 20-mile hexes, but I also build maps that "zoom in." Recently on my wiki, I posted such a map of Agder, a county in southern Norway. I wasn't especially pleased with how it looked on the wiki, so I spent some time making adjustments to the icons and the general appearance. The result is this:
The above includes Agder and a larger area surrounding it; opening the image in its own window should provide a clear detailed picture, as I saved this in 300 dpi.
I'm still not sure. The mountain repetition looks a bit processed, but then there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. I do like the colour scheme for the larger, more important cities; they're in shades of brown. But overall, I'm posting this to make the point — outside the series I'm writing — often demands a new look at old work. It's not a straight line. This is, I think, my fourth version of a 6-mile hex map, and still I'm looking at it and wanting to change the border colour.
At least, it doesn't look heavy-handed. With maps, I find, muted variations often look better than primary colours.
Anyway, no, there's no key to the above as yet. White country is pure mountain rock with little vegetation, the bluish-purple is shield country, interspersed with stunted and very thin pine trees, while the various greens indicate semi-arable and arable lands. Darker colours are more populated and possess more activity (hammers), wealth (coins) and farming (bread).
You made the right choice in colors. In general adults prefer more muted pastel-like colors; bright colors with extreme contrast can be off-putting and hard to look at or concentrate on.
ReplyDeleteI tend to save the stronger colors for points of interest and roads. Even then they are more brick red then true red.
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