Monday, October 24, 2016

Vectorizing Fezzan's Flag

Well, the wiki contest I mentioned in my last post finished this weekend, and I came in second place! I got a snazzy new avatar for the Paradox forums and a cool 75% off voucher. I also had (a surprising amount of) fun, so in celebration, have another flag vectorization video!

The 'W' is for 'wiki.'

This one is for the flag of Fezzan, a country in what is now modern-day Libya. The region has a long history, stretching back to when it was ruled by the Garamantian Empire from 500 BC to AD 700. By 1444 it was a small independent kingdom, assimilated into the Ottoman Empire in the 17th century (though in Europa Universalis IV the Mamluk rulers of Egypt tend to get it first!).

Fezzan's location and size in 1444.


A nice and simple little flag, and symmetry made it twice as easy to do. Hope you enjoyed it, a hui hou!

Thursday, October 20, 2016

Vectorizing Ryazan's Flag

Well, Paradox Development Studios just released a large patch and expansion for Europa Universalis IV last week, and that means it's time to update the wiki! To make it more fun there's a contest with a raffle involved for people who contribute, and one of the ways to contribute is higher-resolution flag images. (The previous such contest, back in April, is what got me started doing it in the first place.)

As such, this is the perfect time to do a whole bunch and upload them, so I've done quite a few this past week, and recorded the process of some of the more interesting ones (some flags are quite simple, which makes for easy, but not-especially-interesting vectorizing). I'll be releasing some more such videos in the next few weeks as I get around to rendering them, but in the meantime I thought I'd share one now.

This video shows the process of vectorizing the flag of Ryazan, one of a number of small independent principalities in the 15th century located in what would later become Russia. The principality of Muscovy was simply one such principality which steadily grew bigger and bigger by assimilating surrounding principalities until it morphed into the medieval Russian state.

Ryazan's location in 1444. (It's the small brown nation in the center.)


As the subject of the video is Russian, I went with some nice rousing Russian music from Tchaikovsky.


No, I don't know why that horse has no ears.

Monday, October 10, 2016

Vectorizing Illiniwek's Flag

The Illiniwek (or Illinois) Confederacy was a group of some twelve or thirteen tribes living in North America, in roughly the area of the state they would give their name to. The name comes from nearby Ottowa tribes, and means “he-who-speaks-the-common-way,” though the Illinois referred to themselves as the inoka, a term of unknown meaning.

Picture of the Illiniwek from Europa Universalis IV as they start the game in 1444.

In Europa Universalis IV the Illiniwek are represented as a single entity, with a no-doubt fictional flag. It's a fairly simple and clean design, though, so one day I got the urge to go about vectorizing it, and here is the resulting video:


Hope you enjoyed it! A hui hou!