WiP: Tarina for BlackStar Studios...

[ravells]

I like the shadow you've got on the ducts, makes them look like they have arches....clever!

[mearrin69]

Thanks!

Here's a look at the full thing with stand-in labels and such. There's still some work to do on it (like scaling down those immense aquaducts) before it's final but this might be the last post I make on this thread...look for the final thread soon. Thanks for all of the advise and encouragement!
M

[Clercon]

I must say that this is an absolutely fantastic map! I am actually speechless looking at all the details.
One small thing though, one of the aqueducts clearly comes from someplace off the map, the others seems to start in the river. Is this intended or are you adding more lenght to them later? Taking water from the river in a city of this size to feed the population is probably only a good idea if you want to poison everyone. The water also needs to be pumped up to be able to reach all parts of the aqueduct. Which seems like a bad solution.

[Redrobes]

Awesome. The field patterns make it look quite modern. My skim read didn't pick up a date on it. Of course with that style it might be a tad difficult to get old style field patterns of any sensible image quality to use.

Its an unusual style and one that really works well. Probably the best city with realistic style I have seen so far. A good map for commission bargaining I would think !

[mearrin69]

Hi guys. Thanks for the comments and nice words!

@Clercon: The path of the aquaducts was given to me specifically by the client. Apparently it's vitally important to the adventure included with the campaign setting. I wondered about that too but apparently waterwheels were used to raise water into the aquaduct (they sent me refs even!). Agree that the river would probably be dirty but maybe these Roman-type folks are especially clean (or do bad things to people who defile the river or something). I have some redrawing work to do on those because they're outscale and don't show any details (such as the waterwheels). I think I'm going to have to create a separate file at 2x resolution and redraw them before scaling down and pasting them back in...just aren't enough pixels at this res to do them, and they don't match the detail level of everything else.

@Redrobes: Yeah. I agree about the fields. It's fantasy Greco-Roman and I tried to pick the most reasonable looking fields I could. I initially tried to draw them by hand but couldn't match the look of the rest of the map at all. If I had more time I'd do more work on this part of the map to see what I could come up with. What do you mean by "commission bargaining"? Renegotiation? If so, I wish. I don't think there's any more money to be had at this time. If I do any more, however, the fee's going up!

I set out to draw this map by hand but initially laid in a collage of satellite images to get something on paper. The clients started picking out buildings and saying, "This is here and that is there" so I decided to see what I could do with it. It turned out okay but I *don't* recommend doing it this way to anyone else...ever...again!
M

[Coyotemax]

wow, nice work. rep, oh yes. My only criticism - i wore out my mousewheel trying to zoom in for more detail

[mearrin69]

Thanks much. You can zoom in a bit more on this one...hopefully it'll satisfy you until BlackStar comes out with their product!

I've fixed the aquaducts a bit and refined the wall. Looks much better at the zoomed out level. Now working on final tweaks, finishing up some roadwork, color and lighting correction, etc.
M

[eViLe_eAgLe]

I thought I posted on this.. But anyway! Bloody brilliant piece mearrin!! One of the best satellite style city I've ever seen!

[Ramah]

Awesome map, Mearrin.

I certainly do not envy you the time it must have taken to do this. :S

[ravells]

That is just stupendous! I just hope the people who see it don't think you've taken a satellite photo of a real place and just changed the names! This is, to my mind, as amazingly cool as A2Area's city map. Absolutely incredible.