Fenwatch (medieval border town)

[Gandwarf]

Well, have some reputation for posting your first map. And a city map at that... great, I love cities

Anyway, I would definitely suggest toning down the green colors a bit. At the moment the forest is sticking out, while you want the town to stick out. Otherwise all the elements work pretty well together. Next time you might want to give some of the houses a different color to give the impression they have different roofs (making the town seem a bit more organic).

[geoff_nunn]

Next time you might want to give some of the houses a different color to give the impression they have different roofs (making the town seem a bit more organic).

Thanks for the rep!

The buildings were definitely the toughest part for me. I was trying to adapt Pyrandon's PS city tutorial to GIMP. Unfortunately, the PS version uses a layer style of bevel and emboss while creating the buildings, which is not available in GIMP.

When I applied the bevel filter to the building layer, the bevel was not as sharp as I was hoping for and the emboss filter always turned the buildings a light gray, almost silvery color regardless of what they looked like before.

I ended up using several different layers at various levels of transparency. A bevel and emboss layer for shape
A shingle texture for, well... texture
a color overlay to get rid of the silvery sheen caused by the embossing filter
and several blending overlays.

I did a lot of experimenting with things while working on the buildings and feel like my process and final product wound up a little muddy in that regard. I intend to revisit this on my next map... possibly after downloading some python scripts to help me more easily modify textures and the like.

[geoff_nunn]

Okay, here's an updated version of the map. I added a couple filter layers to the forest to give it a gloomier look more appropriate to a swamp. I also added a colored overlay to the buildings to add some variety to the roof colors in an effort to create a more organic look. Then, just for fun, I put together a heraldric seal for the town featuring two boars rampant with a potion flask between.