Re: Iteration/Mapping

 For the Mapping workshop, we were tasked with going on a short walk around the University area and noting our path. After, we were told to draw and create a map of our journey, with multiple iterations of the map coming to a final edition.

For this task I walked with a few friends, taking the same path as them - as such we had the same path in itself, but decided to do our own designs for the map itself. After sketching the design roughly on paper, I moved to digital works to create my initial (and more accurate) drawing of our journey. The original drawing was created in class, whereas the rest of the work was created outside the workshop.

The original sketch I created of my journey, from memory.

The first iteration of my map - a simple drawing with the path I took being in black rather than grey:

The first thing I noted about this drawing is that is a single loop - a 'track' if you could call it. This gave me the idea of a racing track, used in video games and the like. This is what lead me to creating the following - a menu screen featuring a 3D model of the path I took, listed in the context of a video game racing track. I decided to create a 3D model of the area with only the path laid out and building shown/rendered. Creating this in 3DS MAX using references (Google Maps) for the buildings, I created the following render.

The render of the model for my Map.

With the model in hand, I decided to move on collecting references for an actual menu screen. Specifically, I gathered images from the track selection screens of track racing games. While these games often used larger tracks and the like, I thought that my model was still somewhat appropriate.

References and inspiration I used for my final design:

With these in mind, I began to craft my final piece for this workshop. Using the exact render of the 3D model, I decided to make this the central part of the piece. If this were to be in a game, I can imagine a 3D model like this rotating while the player makes their choice. Being the largest part of the image, I put that in first.

I then had a large amount of space I could dedicate to the User Interface (UI) of the menu. I went on to create a 'track select' list, weather. time, laps and cars as clear pieces of information. Along with that, I created a 'start race' and 'track info' part of the UI. The start race button was rather an obvious choice to have, however, the track info section is something that some of my references did not contain. Due to the fact that I had a lot of spare space, I decided to make use of it and add that in as well. I also had a 'select' and 'back' button added, which would be intended to also have button prompts next to them. This is common in the reference screens, as having an area dedicated to the 'controls' is often helpful for people new to the menu system in question.

However, with all this, the piece was obviously missing something. It felt rather bland and plain to look at - while minimal, like the above references, the piece didn't have enough to it. That's why I decided to take advantage of my other workshops and used an image I took while in the same area. This was to represent Norwich, and would change with each track selected. I felt this added the variety that the image needed. With that, I had my finished piece - seen below.

The final version of my Mapping task, created using Photoshop: