Pen Wars Round 2

Following on from Tuesday's post which compared Unipin and Micron pens, here's a follow-up test.

This time I've drawn the same boxes, but I first drew pencil outlines. I then went over the pencil lines with the pens, let the ink dry for an hour and erased the pencil. The test was suggested by Del Teigler in the Google+ comments for the post. It makes quite a lot of sense as many maps will be drawn in ink over a pencil outline.

The results were similar to the first test, but I think the Micron pens have done a better job of covering the pencil. On some of the boxes drawn with the Unipin pens there seems to be some shine coming though from the pencil (probably made worse by the scanner).

I think overall the Microns are the better pens. In the UK they are slightly more expensive than the Unipins, which may be an issue if you're a heavy user. I hope to review some more pens and pencils in the future, and possibly some other stationery items too.

Pen Wars UniPin v Micron

Like many old school mappers I do like my pens. I'm not overly fussy about them though, and at the £1-£2 each price range I'll happily try anything that comes along.

For the last year or so I've mostly been using UniPins, but recently I picked up a full set of Microns and decided to see how they compare in a crude test.

Here's a 600dpi scan of some text (more to show which pen is which) and some boxes. All the pens have been used for a while, but the Microns slightly less than the UniPins. The Staedtler Triplus is included as a sort of control as I think it is a good all round choice that is not only cheap and widely available, but also comes in 30 different colours.

My initial thoughts are that the UniPins give smoother lines,but the Microns produce better black levels.

Last Minute Lava Geomorph

I just finished my second Lava Geomorph for the Inkwell Ideas #GeomorphMapContest.

This one is entitled Hot Rock Crossing I created it by drawing the initial black border by hand then scanned and added a fill of lava colouring. The other components (computer generated chains and hand-drawn wooden walkways) were then created as new images and dropped on to the main drawing one bit at a time.

Geomorphic Beermats Latecomer Options

The Geomorphic Beermats campaign really whipped up a storm, raising over £3,000 in just 6 days. If you missed it, I'm still happy to accept latecomers right up to the point that the Kickstarter funds are transferred. If you want to join as a late backer, please send an email stating which reward you would like, along with the country they need posting to, and I'll send you a Paypal invoice. My email address is oubliettemagazine AT yahoo DOT co DOT uk

Sewer Geomorphs

This is the last call for the Geomorphic Beermats Kickstarter which ends in about 3 hours. I've really enjoyed this campaign. Just one week ago I hadn't even considered it as a campaign. The beermats were just a little test print-run. Now it looks like I'm going to be ordering over 25,000 of the things!

My last sample maps are some of some miniature-scaled sewers. They're pretty similar to the mines I posted earlier today, but show another potential use for the mats.

Mine Track Geomorphs

The Geormorphic Beermats Kickstarter ends at 10pm (GMT) tonight. I'm hoping to get a couple more sets of sample tiles completed before then. The first of them show how the tiles can be used to create miniature-scaled mine track geomorphs.

These took me about 5 minutes each, so it wouldn't take too long to produce even a complex map for a game. I haven't cut the borders away as I want to get on with another set of different tiles to post before the end of the Kickstarter.

Beermat Castles

The Geomorphic Beermat Kickstarter is now in the final 33 hours. Today I want to show another possible use for the mats as very quick, modular castle tiles.

The example below is simple castle that was put together using just 5 beermats (without the extension for the drawbridge it would have been 4). As the pieces are still drawn as geomorphs you can make a castle as big as you like. I've left the central area clear, but in use I'd probably draw a central keep on its own card that could simply placed on the map.