Symbol Creation
I am looking at using CC3+ for a school project for my Foundations A course. I want to use mixed media for my final project. I want to make my own bitmaps and symbols using acrylic paints and then either scan them or take photos of them to get them on the computer. For them to be good enough, what setting should I set the scan on? Thanks
Comments
If they are floorplan symbols, that is 100 pixels per drawing unit. So, determine how large the thing the symbol represents is.
For example, say you make a drawing of a human corpse. A human is roughly 6 feet tall, so that would be 6 drawing units (dungeon scale) = 600 pixels. Assuming this drawing is 4 inches on paper, that is 150 pixels per inch (dpi) for the scanner at the very minimum. Of course, whatever you make probably have very different values than in my example, so use that as a guide for your own calculations.
For other symbol types, CD3 stuff is 40 pixels/drawing unit (feet), and overland is 20 pixels/drawing unit (miles)
You'll probably need to mess with the scanner color settings too, but that is not my area of expertise.
However (there's always a however), an important thing to remember is that CC3+ is a vector program with bitmap fills. It will scale your images as needed. The image filtering in CC3+ isn't the best, though, which is why you should try to use symbols as close to a 1:1 scale as you can reasonably do (plus or minus a factor of two usually isn't noticeable). If you have access to a good image editing tool like Photoshop or The GIMP, you can get better image quality in your symbols by taking your pictures at two times your desired final resolution, cleaning them up, and then scaling them down before importing into CC3. As you scale your images down on the input side, the details will get more and more spidery on the output side, so that's something to watch out for in your final composition. You can see this sort of effect with CC3's own symbols: start a Mike Schley inks map and place some symbols at various scales. As you scale up, the system will use its higher-resolution versions of the symbol until it starts replicating pixels once you get past "VH" in the stack (then things start getting chunky). As you scale down, the system will use the filtered versions of the symbols that it created when you created the symbol, but those get blurrier down VL, and then the system just starts throwing out pixels, which can make fine details disappear entirely.
Note that you can (and perhaps should) paint your elements larger than you intend to use them and then filter the size down as I described above. If you're trying to capture incidental elements like texture of the paint, then you'll need to do something other than a scan with a flatbed scanner because the flatbed scanner has a light that's almost coincident with the sensor, which will likely reduce the surface texture to the point of invisibility. A camera on a tripod with good low-angle lighting fixed to one side (a clamp-on light works well) will let you repeatably capture data from multiple canvases.
Inspiration drawn from two maps of India from the 1500's.
Inspiration drawn from two maps of India from the 1500's.
Inspiration drawn from two maps of India from the 1500's.
Inspiration drawn from two maps of India from the 1500's.
Inspiration drawn from two maps of India from the 1500's.
Thanks for the encouragement! :-)
Inspiration from ancient architecture of India and the Lotus flower symbol.
Inspiration drawn from two maps of India from the 1500's.
Inspiration drawn from two maps of India from the 1500's and ancient architecture.
I just made these up. ;-)
Tower is inspired from ancient architecture from India.
Inspiration drawn from two maps of India from the 1500's.
Inspiration drawn from two maps of India from the 1500's.
Tree symbol inspiration drawn from two maps of India from the 1500's.
And perhaps some of the ruins could look a bit more ruined. Just a thought
Inspiration drawn from two maps of India from the 1500's.
Inspiration drawn from two maps of India from the 1500's.
Inspiration drawn from two maps of India from the 1500's. and photographs of volcanic activity in India.
Inspired by photographs of volcanic activity in India.
Inspiration drawn from two maps of India from the 1500's.
Inspiration drawn from two maps of India from the 1500's.