September Entry: "Feeding Hills" Village Maps

[Ashenvale]

[B]Here's My Final Map for Challenge Purposes![/B] I'm posting it here as well as in the last post on this thread.

The text below is from my original post (but I deleted the original WIP image to avoid confusion!):

[Original Text from Original Post:]

I think I'm doomed.

I'll never finish by the 25th.

This "before and after" piece is part of a four-map commission for a D&D low-level adventure by one of Paizo's and Kobold Quarterly's favorite authors. I've crafted the four maps into two, full-page double maps. One double map, the one I'll post here, shows a village in a "before and after" format. The second double map, which I won't post here, shows the "dungeon" locus for the adventure, an underground complex viewed both in a side cross section (top portion of the double map) and in an aerial view (bottom portion of the map). Both the village and the dungeon double maps share the exact same border frame (colors and all).

In the "before and after" village map, the top portion shows a thriving farming community in summertime. I originally thought the bottom piece was supposed to be the same village years later, after it’s been abandoned and gone to seed, overtaken by the wilds. Then I read the adventure manuscript. The "after" village actually a duplicate village existing at the same time, built by the evil-doers to mirror the existing town for nefarious purposes, but gone to seed and overrun by nature. (I hope this doesn't diverge too far from this competition's "before and after" premise, but I have to do what the author and publisher demand.) I'll show the run-down village by moonlight to make it extra-creepy. I have an email out to the author asking if I can add some weird lights coming from derelict buildings to add color and develop the haunting effect I'm seeking.

Thevillage double map's deadline isn't for several months, and I should NOT be working on this now. I have other projects due MUCH sooner, projects I'm neglecting! But what were the chances I'd get asked to do a before-and-after-type project in the same month that a before-and-after challenge happens to be the Cartographer's Guild Mapping Challenge? I couldn't resist trying, so I banged away on the first half of the village double throughout the last couple of weeks.

But here we are, five days from the deadline, and I'm at least a day and a half away from finishing the first section. In this first section, I need doors, windows, slats and thatch (that go in the right direction) on each and every roof, and a church with steps, pillars, and steeple without missing sections. I need to correct every single building's shadow. I need bridges. I need to scroll back the saturation. I need to sink the far trees into the landscape so they don’t float above it like billious clouds (or just look incompetently cut out and pasted on). And then I need tags, a compass rose, and all of the embellishing design elements beyond simply painting the village. I need to make soooooo many changes my mind boggles.

And then I need design and craft the whole second map!

So I'm probably out of it. But it's not for lack of trying!

Here's where I am. This image is © 2009 by Edward J. Reed, all rights reserved.

[Steel General]

This looks nice already, hope you have time to finish it.

[zenram]

Wow, every time i said, "hey, im getting better", i enter this forums and look at this wonderful maps and i have to get out by the rear door saying, "there are a long road to go". XD

What means... What an amazing work... XD

[Ashenvale]

Wow, thanks zenram! Your words inspire!

[Ashenvale]

I realized several days ago that I have little hope of meeting Friday’s challenge deadline. I'd need until the end of the month to pull off both halves of this "before and after" map. So I’ve shifted my focus to crafting the strongest double-map images I can for the publisher.

Now that I'm freed from the deadline, I'm indulging myself exploring a slew of different techniques that I've never tried before. I'm experimenting and inventing. I'm also foolishly obsessing on time-consuming details so miniscule that they likely won't be visible in the published product. I should abandon these tiny fixations, but they present brand new challenges, and I love trying to figure out how to do something artistic with no guidance or inkling how to pull it off. Creative battles that I don’t know how to win engage me the most. Once I understand a routine or set of procedures likely to produce successful results, I start to lose interest in it. So much for efficiency!

Here's a tiny slice from the developing map. This detail comprises about one sixteenth of the full map's area. Lost to do! No chimneys yet, or split-rail fences. The blur of the trees feels incongruous with the unnecessarily sharp clarity of the buildings. I've bungled the stone wall's perspective; it leans too far to the left in the sweep of its turn. The water ripples feel too large for the rest of the image's scale. Most of these imperfections seem less jarring when I pull back to see the entire image. But I'd still like to correct them before turning the map over to the publisher.

[Ashenvale]

Here's a broader view of the developing village (showing about 50%-60% of the complete map's area). Time to stop procrastinating on the church.

[Ashenvale]

Chimneys. I'm down to just the chimneys. And a fence or two. Then I can balance the whole image and post it!

[Ascension]

Did you lay out vanishing points or just eyeball it? Looks pretty sweet.

[Ashenvale]

Here's my final "before" image, a thriving farming community before the evil comes.

Please let me know if this looks oversaturated for you. I work on two screens. On my better screen, its subtle and perfect. On my newer, less fantastic screen, it's dayglow candyland. I can tamper back the saturation, of course, but I don't know how much to do so. So feedback please! I'm curious what others are seeing.

[jerriecan]

Looks very good to me. Well done!

Jerriecan