A miscellany of weekly ramblings on comics, art and film by Ted Mathot, storyboard artist and writer/artist/self-publisher of graphic novels and comics
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Friday, September 04, 2009

CORA research

Google maps has become a very useful tool in helping to track Cora's journey through the American West. I picked a general route that she will take (I've only shown a small portion here) and turned on the photos, video and wiki elements in order to search for possible areas of interest along the way. I may find new routes for her to take based on the info I can gather. Fun stuff.





Here is an example of Butte, Montana, which was mentioned briefly in the second book of Cora's story.

7 comments:

Slightly Imperfect Role Model for Superheroes and Other Super Things ("Have no fear, imagination is here!") said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Way cool!

Makes it a little easier to research exactly what you need. It'll make skylines, and terrain look right.

Moth

:::Julia Lundman::: said...

that is very cool Ted. Did you see all the random train tracks around Butte? Maybe they are now trainyards?

Great resource!

Anonymous said...

I had an interesting discussion with another artist at the Studio who used Google Earth to find the best perspective of mountain that he painted. He is a plein air artist.
This post is equally interesting as it comes from a story telling perspective.
Are you planning a road trip? The West, some camping gear, and a bottle of Bourbon.

cK

Slightly Imperfect Role Model for Superheroes and Other Super Things ("Have no fear, imagination is here!") said...

Thanks for documenting your creative process so thoroughly!

For whomever may be interested in using Google Earth to enhance narratives (and as uninformed about this as I was last weekend), these may be useful links:

Fantastic YouTube GE channel with quick useful tutorials:
http://www.youtube.com/user/EarthOutreach

GE support group with timeslider tools, models, etc:
http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/

.kmz file from the above bulletin board with places mentioned in Shakespeare's plays:
http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=155428&site_id=1#import

GoogleLitTrips links page:
http://www.googlelittrips.com/

Cool screenshots of "Grapes of Wrath" from LitTrips:
http://web.mac.com/jburg/GoogleLit/Grapes_Photos.html

Record a fly-through tour for sharing on a blog:
http://earth.google.com/tour.html#v=5

"The Sightseer" - Google Earth's Monthly Newsletter:
http://earth.google.com/sightseer_signup.html

Overview of GE capabilities (cool sunlight animation):
http://www.juicygeography.co.uk/googlecoursework.html

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Ted your interest in this as a storyteller seems to be on the cutting edge of GE enhanced narratives (at least of those I've been able to find). Google seems anxious to advertise cool applications through "Google Earth Outreach Showcase"...it might be worth free advertising for Cora/R&I:
http://earth.google.com/intl/en/outreach/submit.html

(Finally subscription attempts to E-Ville Press' mailing list through evilleafterworks@yahoo.com bounce...)

Thanks again!

kalonji said...

your determination is a exemple and help to be involved in cora longest journey. you rock ted :-)

furnete!!

Marcelo Braga said...

Hay, man, I saw that CORA #2 is avaiable! Great news, Just orderd mine!

Great idea you got to make these maps! Shows the strong commitment you got with your work.

Cheers for that!

Best.