July/Aug 2012 Lite Challenge Entry: The City of Trovesport, Jewel of the Crown

[LindaJeanne]

Only time will tell if I've bitten off more than I can chew for the timeframe again:

### Latest WIP ###
Trovesport_002.jpg

[LindaJeanne]

Critiques welcome, btw. There's so much I'm still learning.

Elevation contours added, and starting to sketch out the locations of the major fortifications. I need to make the scale more consistent; the river should be wider. And the contours need to be adjusted... not entirely natural-looking as they are now.

### Latest WIP ###
Trovesport_009.jpg

[atpollard]

Should the land get darker as it rises and the water become darker as it gets deeper?

[LindaJeanne]

More of the city roughly sketched out:

### Latest WIP ###
Trovesport_011.jpg

[LindaJeanne]

Refined the rough-layout of the city districts, and added rough layout of the countryside:

### Latest WIP ###
Trovesport_015.jpg

Should the land get darker as it rises and the water become darker as it gets deeper?

That's how most modern maps are. But I've always liked the effect I've seen on some antique maps where the saturation is greatest on the coastline (my guess is that the reason was to use less ink. But the look seemed appropriate for this map.)

[LindaJeanne]

More refinements.

Next, I've got to start putting the buildings in

### Latest WIP ###
Trovesport_018.jpg



Edited to add: while working on buildings for the seaward-facing slope by the river-- I noticed that the river is just sort of floating on top of the contours. Yes, it's flowing down, but it hasn't carved any sort of bed for itself. Next step: fix the contours so that the surface water is a little less literally "surface" water.

[Larb]

This is looking very pretty. It's all vector, right?

[LindaJeanne]

Thanks . Yup, all Inkscape.

I like the flexibility of vector. So much easier to edit and make changes than with raster.

[ravells]

It's looking great, Linda! I love that curvy feeling you've got going on the map.

[LindaJeanne]

It's looking great, Linda! I love that curvy feeling you've got going on the map.

Thanks!

While waiting for the July/August Lite challenge to begin, I was experimenting with trying to get a more intuitive feel for using bezier curves, and playing around with contour maps. So that kind of carried over into my challenge entry