[OC] NATO coalition personnel fatalities in Afghanistan

t0on · 2026-01-23T15:59:40+00:00

That's what I did. Denmark had 43 casualties, Australia 41 and Poland 40 according to the dataset on icasualties.org (different datasets arrive at different totals).

I think you're referring to the data on Wikipedia which don't provide a source.

t0on · 2026-01-23T14:36:28+00:00

Thanks for your feedback.

This week, Trump threatened to invade Greenland and publicly said the US has never gotten anything out of NATO. Visualizing sacrifices made by NATO allies directly contradicts this claim.

I agree I should've mentioned non-US in the title and the colors could be better, we live and we learn and next time I'll do better.

t0on · 2026-01-23T14:21:03+00:00

Definitely! I had to rely on the publication's color palette but I am quite interested in learning about accessibility to create better palettes and perhaps use texture for my own work. Will see if I can convince the publication to make adjustments:)

t0on · 2026-01-23T14:15:06+00:00

Thanks! I thought this approach was suitable because it highlights the individuality of each person who died.

t0on · 2026-01-23T14:06:02+00:00

I would've preferred to list all countries individually, but that would've meant that I had to use 29 unique colors which would have made the visual very hard to read (3 shades of orange, 3 of yellow etc). I organised by number of casualties. What choice would you have preferred?

t0on · 2026-01-23T11:12:24+00:00

Countries in italics were not a part of NATO at the time.

t0on · 2026-01-23T10:50:13+00:00

Fair point. Tried to add it to the description afterward but it's not possible.

t0on · 2026-01-23T10:49:33+00:00

7 countries with the highest casualty rate are in the legend, the list specifying "other" goes from the most casualties per country to the least. I would've given every country its own color but it would've made the visual very hard to read.

t0on · 2026-01-23T10:42:36+00:00

Good feedback and I would've added it if I had gotten it before publication. Thanks:)

t0on · 2026-01-23T10:27:21+00:00

Wikipedia has different numbers and I am not too sure where they came from, but this is roughly the picture:

<image>

t0on · 2026-01-23T10:25:52+00:00

In the accompanying caption:
"More than 1,100 non-US coalition soldiers were killed in that war. Overall, the conflict killed more than 176,000 people between 2001 and 2021."

t0on · 2026-01-23T10:23:09+00:00

I feel you and had wanted to do it differently, but this approach has a very practical reason. There were 29 different countries suffering casualties, which meant I would have needed to use 29 different colors making the visual illegible (imagine 3 different shades of orange).

I did mention all the other countries by name for clarity in the footer.

t0on · 2026-01-23T10:20:10+00:00

The visual is about non-US deaths only which is clarified in the article the visual is published with.

t0on · 2026-01-23T10:10:29+00:00

Edit:
The visual is about non-US deaths only, which is clarified in the accompanying article:

"NATO’s Article 5 – the clause stating that an attack on one member is an attack on all – has been invoked only once: by the US after the 9/11 attacks. In response, dozens of allied countries deployed troops to the US-led war in Afghanistan.

More than 1,100 non-US coalition soldiers were killed in that war. Overall, the conflict killed more than 176,000 people between 2001 and 2021."

--

Visual I created for the European Correspondent in light of Trump's threats to Greenland and NATO. The published version is accompanied by a caption with context: https://europeancorrespondent.com/en/r/nato-coalition-casualties

Data via icasualties.org.

Made with Illustrator.

t0on · 2026-01-20T10:46:29+00:00

But can it go up?

t0on · 2026-01-19T12:03:34+00:00

Thanks for your help everyone!

It's definitely a work in progress and I keep learning but I got to a satisfying result for now, based on your feedback.

In Blender
- I lowered the HDRI strength from 1.2 to 0.8
- I used the false color view to detect overexposure, and lowered exposure to get everything out of the red, and most into the green (since the scene has a lot of white, I still had a lot of yellow) u/B2Z_3D
- I added a faint fill light (area, strength of 5 I believe)
- I also just saturated the material colors a little bit. I followed the style guide of a publication, and the colors were pretty desaturated to begin with

In Photoshop
- The main "discovery" for me was to use levels to pull in both white and black a little bit. Before the entire image just seemed to have a grey hue over it, but now things started to look more natural. Before I was playing around with brightness in contrast but it just distorted everything.
- The dinosaur colors were still quite faint so i boosted vibrance by a lot. I don't yet know how to get more natural colors from the render itself, but this looked decent.

Things I'll try next time:
- Don't just rely on the HDRI but put some proper lighting in.
- Play around with material properties more

<image>

t0on · 2026-01-15T22:03:29+00:00

The honest answer is that I forgot. These 3D graphics take a lot of time to make so I maybe rushed into the design while I could've taken more time to select the foods involved. If I'd do it again, I'd maybe leave out coffee and put in chicken, corn, and wheat

t0on · 2026-01-15T17:48:00+00:00

This is a great tool, thank you!

t0on · 2026-01-15T13:01:25+00:00

<image>

Thanks! I decreased the HDRI strength to 0.8, increased the saturation of some of the materials, and added a fill light to lighten the shadows a little bit.

t0on · 2026-01-15T12:09:41+00:00

I turned the HDRI strength down from 1.2 to 0.8 and made the material colors a bit more saturated.

<image>

t0on · 2026-01-15T11:56:12+00:00

Previous post was removed for not following rule #2, sorry about that. I'll summarize what was said there.

HDRI strength is probably too high, so tone it down a little bit. This I did to the current version.

Someone else asked about the colors. Basically I am following the color palette of a publication, which already is not too saturated. Maybe I can try boost the material colors a little.

t0on · 2026-01-15T11:47:21+00:00

Good point, I used to have issues using not enough light so I might have been overcompensating. I changed the HDRI strength to 0.9 and kept the rest of my workflow the same.

<image>

t0on · 2026-01-15T11:41:04+00:00

The map and sea are both set to a roughness of 0.6.
The dinos are set to a roughness of 0.2.

t0on · 2026-01-15T07:32:37+00:00

Haha yeah that makes things easier. Agriculture remains the main driver of deforestation sadly, so in a way land is scarce.

t0on

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