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This style of drawing combines a single-point vanishing point with orthographic perspective. A pure orthographic illustration has no "distortion" -- parallel lines always remain parallel. Looking down orthographic railroad tracks, the rails would not get closer as they receded in the distance. In this illustration, horizontal and vertical lines remain parallel, but lines receding in the distance do converge to a single point.
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Recently, I was asked to update this campus map from1997. They had lost their original print out, and had been using photocopies of photocopies, which didn't look very good. However, they'd purchased a few more houses along the street and wanted the new map to show them all, as well as the large addition to the Harvest Hill assisted living apartments. They also asked if the buildings could be in the same relative positions, but larger so they were more visible.
I had originally created the map in Freehand in 1994, updated it in 1997 and still had the file. The problem was that having created the illustration in a 2D program, I couldn't change the perspective, nor could I make the buildings relatively larger in the same positions. I could add the new buildings in the same perspective, but the image would become much wider, and thus, to fit on a letter or legal sized page, the entire image would need to become smaller.
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It became apparent that I needed to redo the map from scratch. This time, I did it in three dimensions in Animation:Master (A:M). With this approach, I could create the buildings as separate models, arrange them in the Choreography, and adjust the camera view and lens settings to get the perspective I wanted. I could also change the scale of the buildings and they'd always remain in perspective.
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I took many photographs of the buildings for reference, and modeled them very simply. I didn't bother with windows, but focused on the main shapes. This gives it a feeling of an architectural model. The colors are reasonably accurate, though simplified -- all roofs have the same colors, as do all bricks, porch floors and trim -- which helps unify the image |
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As you can see in this detail of the Harvest Hill assisted living apartments, I could re-use elements, such as the balcony units and roofs, and I didn't worry about the interior at all. |
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The roads and parking lots were a color map on a flat white surface. After placing the buildings, I rendered an orthographic view from above. I took this into Photoshop and drew out the roads, which showed how I needed to reposition some of the buildings. With roads and parking lots complete, I rendered the image, and added the header information at the top. They were delighted with the finished piece.
Having created this in color, I suggested that they can make posters for display in their lobbies -- an idea they hadn't thought of, but realized how effective they would be. I also created a black and white version that they can print from an Acrobat PDF file to give to patients and visitors.
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