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Daniel Huffman

@pinakographos.bsky.social

An arboreal, poly, gender non-participant mapmaker. • Portfolio & tutorials: somethingaboutmaps.com. • Prints: https://somethingaboutmaps.com/Storefront • You can support my art & teaching at http://patreon.com/pinakographos.

1059 Posts1636 Follower79 Folgt
Don Davis@ddavisspaceart.bsky.social · 3d ago

51 years ago I painted a trio of Viking related works for NASA HQ including the widely reproduced one of the landing on Mars. I have reimagined the Landing portrayal in updated form using digital methods of visualization and painting. I chose the same angle but with reality replacing anticipation.

This oil painting portrays the Viking 1 landing on Mars, which appeared in countless publications. The story of this work is relayed in an earlier post and is shown here for comparison with the new portrayal of this very view, showing the event as it would have appeared. This 1975 anticipatory painting was done with oils on a gesso smoothed 16 X 20 canvas panel, using traditional art methods including a tracing paper guide featured earlier. This work shows in retrospect my ideal of the 'spirit of space art', showing something of a summary of what is known of the subject while conveying what it is about the subject's known or theorized attributes that I find visually compelling. The new digital painting updates that visual impression with one based on our current knowledge. The new digital work was also done at the same size as this one was for possible printing purposes, 16 by 20 inches at 300 DPI. #Sciart In 1976 the pair of Viking spacecraft orbiter/lander combos were sent to Mars. Before Viking, Mars was still largely a place of our imaginations, an unknown that we wrote stories about then studied from Earth and space. The dominance of cratered terrain on the portions of Mars photographed by Mariners 4, 6 and 7 gave an initially Lunar impression of that world, which changed during the development of the Viking lander after Mariner 9 revealed the planet. The first landing was aimed for a flat flood plain, judged as a decent place to search for life. The landing date was July 4, however the intended site appeared too rough for comfort in the high quality orbiter photos, causing the landing to wisely be delayed. A smoother site further 'down stream' was found using photo and radar data. The landing proceeded quite nominally, a magnificent achievement that apparently accounted for what it had to and made it the first time. The first photo from the surface was a look at a footpad to see how solid the 'footing' appeared. Then a moderate resolution panorama of the surroundings was obtained, first showing the rocks, hills, dunes-and bright sky. The latter was my biggest surprise as a space artist. The adjustments to the color balance of the later photos were gradually narrowed down. The ubiquitous dust is planet wide, suspended in the air and coloring the sky a luminous tan ochre. This digital painting shows the view a meter above the surface seeing the lander briefly kicking up dust less than a second before touchdown with the footpads 1.4 meters high. The landing rockets were designed with many nozzles to disturb the surroundings as little as possible. The nearby disturbed dust resembles in color that of the sky. We are 6 meters away from the center of the lander. field of view is 60 degrees, we are looking Northwest with the Sun and Earth off the frame to the left. This is a digital art update of the pre mission oil painting I did for NASA HQ 1n 1975. #Sciart
Daniel Huffman@pinakographos.bsky.social · 5d ago

I feel like AI might benefit cartography if it could reasonably be used for map editing. Not to replace human editing, but to flag possible errors for human review. In my experience, you can always use additional rounds of checking, no matter how many you have. But, so far, it's not looking good.

Screenshot of an AI interaction. A bit of a map is sent to the AI, with a misspelled label for "Chuckchi Sea." The AI says that it "specifically checked" the "Chukchi Sea" label (spelled correctly by the AI) and that it "look[s] good."
Daniel Huffman@pinakographos.bsky.social · 5d ago

I figured out a useful generalization hack. I had a high-res railroad network, including all individual tracks. I wanted to thin this down to single lines for my map. I've used some GIS tools for this in the past, and/or manually selected segments. But this time I used some network analaysis tools.

A screenshot of some rail lines. Rail yards and spurs and double-track sections can be seen.
Daniel Huffman@pinakographos.bsky.social · 6d ago

1,360 labels later, I think this first draft is almost done. There's certainly room for more physical/water features, but I've held back due to time/budget constraints (and the fact that they aren't a focus of the map).

Zoomed out view of Alaska map, with nothing but the labels showing.Screenshot of four inset maps, also showing only their labels.Detail of labels in part of Southeast AlaskaDetail of labels in Bethel area.
Andrew Middleton@mapcenter.com · last wk.

I've been making maps for a while. I'm okay at it. Never thought I could run with the big dogs at NACIS. Now that I'm a map store owner I get to hang out with these rock stars and realize they're actually so committed to education and mentorship I could have been hanging out with them years ago.

NACIS@nacis.bsky.social · last wk.

New in Cartographic Perspectives: Evangeline McGlynn and Will B. Payne discuss their Relational Reprojection Platform, used to create custom azimuthal reprojections of spatial datasets with non-linear distance transformations. Read their article below 👇️ buff.ly/4rWG6na

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Jer Thorp@jerthorp.bsky.social · 2w ago

Do you like maps? There are so many cool things for sale over at @mapcenter.com Like these Flickr maps from Erica Fischer, which completely exploded my brain when I saw them in 2010. www.mapcenter.com/store/p/loca...

Locals and Tourists: Boston — The Map Center

This map takes a little explanation. Software developer Erica Fischer made this series of maps in 2010 by downloading the metadata related to photographs shared to the (then) popular photo website Fli...

mapcenter.com

Daniel Huffman@pinakographos.bsky.social · 2w ago

Slowly adding more layers. Ferries, ground transit, and now some borders. Eventually I'll do some tidying up like making the road/rail lines parallel so that they don't interweave in way that makes it look messy and hard to read. But, that will all come later once I have basic styling done.

A work-in-progress map of Alaska. This detail shows the area about the Gulf of AlaskaA detail map of some roads and rails passing through communities in Alaska
Daniel Huffman@pinakographos.bsky.social · 2w ago

I am often hesitant to repeat any content that I have posted on my blog before. My partner tells me that this repetition is fine, and welcome. My most recent post copies some points I made in a writing years ago, and that’s the part I now see people quoting. So, my partner was right.