Poster Changes since Crit

Since our Crit on monday 5th November i have made changes and progressed through my poster developing a feel for graphic style and problem solving.  Down below is an added texture that was an image of a marble surface.  I simply selected my background i wanted to place my texture in, Copy and paste in front (cmd + C then cmd + F).  I then placed my chosen texture in-between the two backgrounds and made the texture transparency panel to Overlay and Opacity to 40%.

This was a smart move as now i have this in my background.  The texture gives a rough feel and reflects not only my chosen poster but the time period too.  I was making these changes after our Crit and people thought i should include textures.  I agreed on this as these were my plans anyway.  I think the background after these changes complements the sun very much along with my poster title too.

Another one of my recent changes is the gradients on the countries using the gradient tool.

 However the image grab above was not easily done.  I experimenting on illustrator on how to control the gradient more to my needs since the light source being the sun is coming from the left.  I then discovered a gradient tool which allows me to do so.  

Having discovered this tool,  I could now control where the lighter and darker parts of the gradient were manually.  By dragging the circle i could have the dark gradient at the top, side, bottom wherever.  This was really good for me as i could now do this to greater detail than the default gradient slider tool can.  This part of my poster now looks like the lighter part of the green land is being shined on by the sun.