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In order to create a draft piece of my topographic map, I made a large illustrator file with all of the pieces of my island on the left side of my map. Each piece will be stacked on top of the other to create raised land. I sent this file to the laser cutter to have it cut and put into individual pieces.

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Laser Cut Map Piece (Full detail topography)

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Laser Cut Map Piece (Full detail topography)

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After receiving the laser cuttings of part of my map I organised all the pieces together and layered them on top of each other, giving them the topography effect. This experimental piece is much smaller than the size I would use for the full piece, I think the wood by itself is a good design choice however I will further experiment with paints and textures.

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I designed and printed the full right side of the map and put the pieces together to show the entire map fully pieced. I did all of my designing for this segment on Adobe Illustrator, and sent the file to the laser cutter. Every piece I have made is custom made and placed to fit all together.

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Isometric Castle Wall Building (Production)

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Isometric Castle Wall Building (Production)

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Starting the initial creation of my isometric castle wall, I used illustrator to build the shape of my building. I put illustrator's view grid and snap to grid settings on so I could keep all of my shape's properties the same length and same distances apart whilst still achieving the isometric perspective for this building. Making the initial base of the building, I used the same length lines and squares to make it look as perfect and untainted as I could, ready to be tweaked and changed into a rougher more realistic shape to give it more of a rustic and rough look.

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Isometric Castle wall Building (Production)

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Isometric Castle wall Building (Production)

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After completing the base shape of the castle wall, I used the direct select tool and the add anchor point tool to roughen up the lines and parts of the building. This helped me achieve a most illustrative look at the building, moving it away from the perfect line and perfect symmetry I had previously. I think this rougher look is much more appealing to look at and better suits a traditional castle wall design.

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When initially looking into my theme of "Escaping Reality", I wanted to explore the idea of creating my own world. My first steps towards doing this is looking into historical and fantasy maps to build a general idea of what I want to work with.

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During class we did an Illustrator top up skills workshop to add more things to our skill sets this outcome was made using the pattern tool to create a swatch that is placed inside shapes and in certain pattern forms. This means I can use this pattern within any other creation of my own that I want, I can also create more patterns to put on the swatch tab giving me free reign to create patterns linked to what I'd like to create, and saving time where I'd want to reuse a design.

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We then moved on to experiment with a fur texture, we started with two circles with a gradient the attached them together using the blend tool then distorted and transformed using the roughen tool to give it the desired fur effect. To get the shape that we wanted, we connected it to a custom line drawn with the rush tool. This could be used within character design as it gives me the skills to try different textures; I think it could also be used texture if I wanted to digitally draw animals or creatures with fur. The fur texture is also used with many different types of textiles that I could want to create.

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We also experimented with pixelating small icons that we made, I made a flower as exampled and then used the pixelate tool to create the effect. This can be used outside of this workshop to give any of my drawings or icons a pixelated outcome, I think that this skill is very versatile as it opens up to loads of different design choices, such as mimicking the style of a video game or creating a more simplistic style of art but with a good amount of detail.

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Initially my theme idea was escapism, I collected a variety of images that I thought connected well to my idea of escapism. However, I realised that "escapism" was too broad of a theme and planned to move on to a similar idea by changing it to "Escaping Reality".

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We went on a trip the the Tim Burton exhibition and saw many different and original images from Burton's collection. This image in particular stuck out to me because of how abstract yet strong the image itself is. The lighting and composition of the photo sparks interest because of how bold and detailed it is.

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This image from the Tim Burton exhibition stood out to me because the giant red spiral pointing at the small creature at the bottom is very bold and really shows what Burton was trying to convey. It is both weird and abstract with perfectly fits Burton's style.

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Updating our typography skills, we learnt how to use the intertwine tool. We did this by writing out a word and drawing a line all around the letters in the word, this allowed us to use the intertwine tool to select and remove parts of the line that overlapped the word giving it the effect that its travelling under and over the letters. Typography is used very often in a lot of different kinds of digital work meaning this skill can offer a reliable design choice for further use, allowing me to branch out and create several different styles for my typography usage.

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I looked into Tolkien's drawings and paintings to see how he himself created "Middle Earth". I wanted to research into creating my own world and using Tolkien's work is a good foothold. Tolkiens artwork is very interesting because it gives me an idea of how he wanted his world to be envisioned, this relates very strongly to my theme as I need to find how I want my world to be shown in both writing and imagery.

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This photo of the joker from Tim Burton's Batman i find is very detailed and interesting, the chalk sketching and detail in the image is amazing and it really shows Burton's original concept for his rendition of the film.

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Using the website "Inkarnate" https://inkarnate.com/maps I created the draft of my fantasy world for my theme. I created a mock map as part of experimenting with my "Escaping Reality" theme. I wanted to focus on the part of escaping reality physically by being in another world; this led me to start creating my own world that I can use to portray my theme's message. I went on to name some of the islands, countries and continents in my world to make it feel more alive and detailed. The website I used allowed me to name certain areas and place pictures and objects where I want to make sure it feels like a world I created. I can then use the map I created on Inkarnate as a draft for my real map, it gives me a general idea of where I would like everything. Following a similar climate to Earth, I put the colder areas at the top and the warmer more middle centred, making sure I created a lively world.

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As and initial outcome, I would like to create a topographic piece made out of laser cut wood, I first of all researched into other topographic pieces of maps and ones created in wood cuttings which then gave me a better idea of how I would create it. Generally, topographic maps are very detailed with how they show land levels, visualising depth and height, this will show me how to structure my map piece and make it look genuine and real.

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Experimenting with Illustrator skill outside of workshop.

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Experimenting with Illustrator skill outside of workshop.

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Using the intertwine tool that we learnt how to use in the workshop, I decided to use my map name as an initial experiment with it, the green sort of represents plants and vines travelling around

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Joshua Abarbanel has created 3d models and pieces using wood laser cuttings and arranging them to form these amazing wall and 3d structures. After experimenting with laser cut wood in this and in previous projects, I find that its a very effective art medium especially considering that I can use a digital method to create the shapes I want printed, tying it into the graphic design aspect of my project.

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I removed all of the colours and cut the map down to just the base on Inkarnate, I then put this into Illustrator and simplified it using image trace and physically tweaking it to make the shapes as I want them. After simplifying this map, I will make sure the shapes have no fill and can be used as a file to be sent to the laser cutter to have each individual island cut out.

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I separated my islands and turned them into no fill images on illustrator for the laser cutter. For this initial experiment, I only created the base layer of my map to find out how it would print and how it would look in physical form.

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As I would like to laser cut pieces as separate parts to create a map, I have created individual sections of the map and simplified them to outlined pieces ready to be processed for the laser cutter. I also constructed the full map from each individual piece to show what it looks like when placed all together.

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After having the shapes cut in illustrator, I received my wood cuttings and laid them out in the form that I wanted to use for my map. I then painted them in the colours that fit the areas they belonged, this also acted as a crucial step towards bringing my map to life. I plan to print more of the pieces to show it in different forms, primarily with more layers and building it up as a topographic piece.

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Projecting my own world to escape to in real life, creating a world is my way of escaping reality, as you were to if you were reading a book, watching a film or playing a game.

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Isometric Building creation & production

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Isometric Building creation & production

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Finally, I used the rougher building texture and coloured it in with a stony grey, adding small singular rock texturing sparsely on the building. I think the sparse rock texture definitely helped give the building the more illustrative effect like as if it was hand drawn. When placing this onto my bigger map, I intend to spread it out across the map by copy and pasting it in groups to give the idea of civilisation around my map.

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To add to my now collection of isometric castle buildings, I have started to design a castle tower that will fit into my civilisations for the map piece. For this tower, much like the castle wall, I built a symmetrical, straight line base of the image to edit after creating. I again used the line tool to map out the building and the grid & snap to grid settings to keep it all in place.

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To further edit the tower I repeated the steps the same as which I did for the castle wall to give it the more rugged and rough look as if it was made out of a stony textured material. This again gives it a more illustrative design and is way more appealing to look at than if it were still perfect lines. Texturing this proved as slightly more of a challenge as I used curved lines for the roof, this was an obstacle I overcame quickly as all I needed to do was directly edit the lines similarly as to how I would with the straight lines.

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To start exploring my digital map, I roughly sketched out a mock up in my sketchbook to annotate on top of, this helped me to map out where I wanted to position each separate biome in weather accurate places. I also integrated an equator line and labelled which areas are colder and warmer to give myself the idea of a climate within my self made world. Using these, I would be able to colour the different areas on my digital map, corresponding to the temperature and location on the map.

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Before creating my isometric buildings in adobe illustrator, I had to first sketch out the general idea of what I was going to make. I experimented here with a handful of similar and different style buildings, mostly revolving around a tutor house and castle wall style.

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After roughening up the edges of the tower wall, I added some details, I re-used the windows from my previous Castle build. I also added lines to double up the sides of the building, I did this so I could give the ends of the buildings a wooden pillar look; this added more detail and gave the building a more illustrative look. To further achieve this look, I added the small stones into the side of the bottom wall, like I did with the first building, this again gave more detail and filled the bottom of the image out.

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I began experimenting with piecing the buildings together to see how they would fit. I am very glad with how it turned out, especially how well each piece fits with each other and how versatile moving each piece is.

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Finally I finished my digital map piece by adding the names of the locations and the self made cities on to my detailed, coloured map. I am proud of how this came out and there isn't too much I'd change. If I had the opportunity to work on it again, I would add more locations onto the map to give it more depth.

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My wood laser-cut piece came out very well and much better than expected, I really like the layering of the cut pieces and how it represents my map. If I could change anything about this, I would add more layers to give it more depth and detail, however I enjoy how it looks currently.

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To add something more than just buildings to the piece, I decided to create a castle wall in which I could piece together with the other parts of the cities. This design followed the same as the tower with the wooden beams on the side to add detail and suggest support in the image.

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For each named location of my map, I created a custom city using my isometric buildings. Each individual building, wall or tower fits perfectly with each other and can be put into any formation that I wanted. I put each one of these cities on a different location on the map and gave them a name. It makes the map feel more alive and gives it much more of a flare over that of the image I had before. I'm really proud of how this outcome turned out and would gladly do it again, however if I had the opportunity to do it again, I would ad more variations of buildings to give it les of a repetitive feel.

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FMP Project Proposal -Logan Saunders (1)