August 2010 Entry : Brushy, Kansas - 1873

[mearrin69]

@Tilt: Thanks. A couple of the items you mentioned will be taken care of shortly. The boardwalks actually don't have a texture yet - they're just flat color marking the shape. I was planning on a lightish wood texture. Most of the buildings don't yet have texture, just a "grunge" overlay. Hopefully I'll get more of them textured tonight...and get in some vertical sign-fronts on the roofs. I'm still not sure if I'm going to put any more boardwalks, which is why some of the roof shapes haven't been determined yet (still just have the default PS-generated bevel). I'll give the boards a go again but may have to come up with a different board texture (i.e. minus cracks) to make it look like the text is painted on. Actually, maybe chiseled into the surface would look better?
M

Edit: I've also realized that I need at least a couple of the trees reaching out over the roofs to give them height...right now they all look "shrubby".

[tilt]

if its in photoshop you make it you can put the text layer directly above the board layers - then with ALT pushed down click on the line between the layers to make the "top" layer only show where there are pixels on the "bottom" layer. (text might have to be rastered first to work - not sure)

[mearrin69]

Haven't done anything with the boards and text yet. Been trying out some different layer styles on the text, though. The red and orange looks very western but maybe it's too southwestern...and it's definitely too much to be applied to all of the text. I think some new, not so cracked boards are in order with nice chiseled-out text. Will work on it. In the meantime, this version has some more texturing, boardwalks, etc. Minor stuff, I guess, but progress. Think I'll be done with the roofs tomorrow.

Gotta find me some horses and carts.
M

### LATEST WIP ###

[tilt]

Gamerprinter put up some horses a couple of months ago ... can't remember where though, maybe in a thread about assasination locations?

[Jaxilon]

Those old signs should be engraved in the wood with the letters left standing out from the surface if you want another opinion. That would seem very western to me. But then I spent many years in a small western town out here in Arizona so I'm all sorts of used to horses, cattle and wooden signs.

[mearrin69]

So, the map of Brushy was never going to be my entry for this challenge...just part of it. Here's the rest.

The challenge calls for a campaign entry point so I wanted to provide enough plot hooks to get a GM thinking about how to kick off a new Deadlands game. Several adventures are hinted at in town itself and there's a bigger hook to draw the PCs out of town when the time comes. The church and graveyard offer an easy early plot device, while Silas Potter (and whatever damnable thing he's building up in the hills) probably poses a bigger challenge.

I'll still be working on the map itself until the challenge concludes as there's still a lot I want to do to it. The map is "placed" in this PS file, so any changes I make to the original will show up in this one automatically (gods, I love Photoshop sometimes). I do plan to make a piece that's just map...with the signboards and all included.

Okay. I'm not calling it done by any stretch...so C&C still welcome!

### LATEST WIP ###

[Jaxilon]

You dog, I'm all itchin to go shoot up the whole dang town now! Who's gonna wanna Yurt when there's all this dust to be kicked up over here?! Yer, killin' me man.

I used to play Boothill back in the day and this has me just wanting to do a western. The write up is excellent. I think you have a typo in paragraph 3: "in the joint office" I believe should be, "is the joint office".

Sidenote: So you have your color map linked to this black & white one so any changes you make there automatically update to here? Is that what the linked thingie is in Gimp?

[mearrin69]

Thanks. I still want a yurt. And a SPACE yurt.

Bloody typos. Thought I caught them all. Thanks for the eagle eye!

Yes on linking, though I'm not sure how it works in Gimp. The B&W and other processing that happens to the linked map are all adjustment layers, overlays, etc.
M

[Crayons]

Now that's real cool. A humdinger! I was wondering how you were going to package the campaign element, really effective! Are you going to sepia tone the photo, it would add some warmth to the colour scheme...

[tilt]

that looks damn nice - really like that, I agree with Crayons a little sepia tone could make it perfect