Lost Island Map

This is a supplementary resource designed for use in Practical English Writing 2. It is one of the first things I worked on for the book (because it was loads of fun thanks to the great illustration!).

Practical English Writing 1 takes students from their homes in Korea on a trip to the US (it includes reading and writing sections like getting ready for a trip, going to the airport, US customs and arrival papers, writing addresses, postcards, and letters).

Practical English Writing 2 begins the return journey from the US back to Korea. But along the way, the airplane (in the first reading section) crash lands on a deserted island. Students then practice creative writing skills to explain how they will survive on the island, find food, build a shelter, and so on.

Part of this project includes a map of the deserted island that was carefully drawn by Daniel Kilduff (one of the book’s authors, and a skilled illustrator). In order to fit his hand drawn map into the new book design, I needed to clean it up and add color in Photoshop. The following is a list of the work I did on it:

Work Done

1. In Photoshop, adjusted brightness, contrast, and levels to remove most of the gray areas and create an image that was nearly entirely a black line drawing on white
2. In Illustrator, did a Live Trace of the map in only black/white to fully remove the remaining gray sections and create a vector line image
3. In Photoshop
   1. Erased the original handwritten text and added a new map legend in the font style of the rest of the book
   2. Used the pen tool to outline the island and add color and texture separately to the land and the water
   3. Used the brush tool to paint different colors over the various sections of the island (trees, swamps, mountains, etc)
   4. Traced all the trees with the pen tool and added a drop shadow and inner glow effects to make them “pop” off the map
   5. Traced some of the larger mountains with the pen tool to cut them out and add drop shadows behind them
   6. Added a border and outer glow around the island to make the coast light up
   7. Added a light white color and 3D shading effects to the 4 circles to make them look like magnifying glasses
   8. Also applied the 3D effects to the skull
   9. Added a worn paper texture and drop shadow
   10. Added a layer of sand (photo) under the map

Below you can see the original hand drawing as well as my design iterations to the final printed product: