Ancient City of Zabol

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The imaginary recreation of the ancient city of Zabol

The city of Zabol is significant for Persian speakers.

It is home to one of the best known characters, Rostam from the legend of Rostam.

The image below shows the location of Zabol in the old world.

The Making

The making of this illustration was labor intensive. In the summer of 2015 a friend and I set out to make a video game called "The Legend of Rostam" to help retell the story of Rostam in an interactive way. After spending four months of full time work, we realized that we could not continue without a larger team. There was too much work and no digital resources for Persian miniatures available online. For the graphics, I had to make everything from scratch. I digitally recreated patterns, styles, calligraphies.

The Characters

The characters were not illustrated by me and collaged in from scanned images of miniature old paintings.

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Now, I want to turn some of what I have made into digital libraries and share them to inspire my peers to work with Persian miniature in graphic design and to avoid having to work from scratch like I did.

Technique

The first phase of preparation was in Ai. I looked at old miniature paintings from Iran and the Near East and replicated hundreds of patterns. Adding it to the swatches made it very easy to fill in shapes with the patterns I wanted.

There are elements in Persian miniature like Tazhib (تذهیب), that could be recreated using Ai brushes. This function makes it unbelievably easy to create in whatever shape or form.

Same logic follows for the more complex shapes as shown below

I used Photoshop to add some texture and imperfections to the object imported from Ai.

This give it a bit of soul!

Ultimately I pieced the buildings and compositions in Photoshop.and exported the image in 8 peaces.

The Cult of The Blue Star

a closer look

The House of Sun - خانه ی آفتاب

a closer look

Music * موسیقی

The music on this piece is composed by Shahram Poornazeri and sung by Homayoon Shajarian. The first time I heard it, it brought vivid imagery of ancient cities into my mind. What inspires me about this song is that the composer has tried to digitize and electronically reproduce the traditional Persian instruments. This is exactly what I am trying to do with Persian paintings!