Thread: June/July Lite Challenge Entry - Celtic Hill Fort

Nice work. I agree, the gate house needs a little less color saturation. The shadows are fine unless you are looking for perfection, in which case you need to somewhat match the shape of the shadow with the tower's roof's peak, also the alignment of the shadows is not the same on all the buildings. A couple are more south direction while most are southeast. I would not have noticed if you didn't ask, but I am not as particular as some people are with those details.

Originally Posted by Bogie

Nice work. I agree, the gate house needs a little less color saturation. The shadows are fine unless you are looking for perfection, in which case you need to somewhat match the shape of the shadow with the tower's roof's peak, also the alignment of the shadows is not the same on all the buildings. A couple are more south direction while most are southeast. I would not have noticed if you didn't ask, but I am not as particular as some people are with those details.

Yeah, I will work on those. I also realized I left my ISO-grid off when making the shadows. Switching that back on for a while would certainly help make the alignment more uniform.

Ok, update! Fixed the shadows, toned down the saturation on the gatehouse, and added a forest in the background.

### LATEST WIP ###

Nice going. You are showing very well how these forts tend to be and good job with the shadows too. I think the base (grass) needs some more sort of texture so it integrates more with the buildings and whatnot. For some reason it looks to me like compared with the rest of the things (trees, walls, buildings) it's too flat which makes it look like everything is just pasted on top of it. If that makes sense you might be able to read my mind

Keep up the good work.

This looks great so far!

Originally Posted by Jaxilon

I think the base (grass) needs some more sort of texture so it integrates more with the buildings and whatnot. For some reason it looks to me like compared with the rest of the things (trees, walls, buildings) it's too flat which makes it look like everything is just pasted on top of it. If that makes sense you might be able to read my mind

I think I know what you mean. I think the grass is too flat too. I tried one or two things that didn't work at all. When I figure something half-way decent out (that doesn't clash with the established style too much) I'll post a picture.

Um, how about a grass brush? I don't know what gimp has, but ps has a couple of simple brushes that can simulate grass pretty well if you play with the spacing, scatter, size, value, etc, etc. Here, hold on a sec, and I'll see if I can upload a basic black/white jpeg you can turn into a brush if you want, if gimp doesn't already have it. ...


EDIT: The single lines are done with 100% opacity, normal brush; the big splotches are at 60% opacity, normal brush (but for going over what you have, multiply or overlay brush style might be better). Anyhoo, ... You might like it, you might not. Worth a try. =)

This coming along nicely. Your shading work looks good. Also, in addition to Chashio's suggestion, Torstan discusses creating grasslands in his Assorted Tips and Tricks thread.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

Yes, I was thinking of Torstans helpful tips thing regarding the grass to give it a bit more texture. Another method to add texture to an image (and which I (ab)use a lot) is to find a nice big high resolution texture of rust, paper, stone or something of that sort, and make it the top layer set to 7-10% overlay.

Anyway, this is coming along very nicely now!