Need Advice - Battlemat

[JFJohnny5]

Thanks for all the suggestions! I plan to try and implement what I can tonight before I print it. And torstan is right. The water is in the barrels. Though I like the idea of adding another color. I might make the edge of a pond poke out from one of the sides. I'll see. And I really like the idea of a wagon to roll in as "gates". I have to try and find a way to get that in there.

And for those interested. I did this all in Photoshop. It will be printed at 200dpi on two sheets of 13"x19" paper and trimmed down so there is full bleed. The Photoshop file is currently around 600Mb The ground is actually 7 different pattern layers with layer masks on each. I used a Wacom tablet to paint in the different ground layers. I particularly like the trees. It is actually just one tree copied and rotated a lot. But I then hand painted on some additional shadows within the tree itself to give them a sense of depth and form and variety. I really like the way they came out. The art comes from a mix of Dundjinni forum downloads and Dungeon Designer 3 stock material. I agree the camp feels too "clean" to be a bunch of goblinoid bandits. Can anyone reference me to a nice free collection of grunge brushes I can use to give it some character?

[Midgardsormr]

Go to cgtextures.com and look around in the Grunge categories to find a texture you like. These aren't tiling textures, so download the large ones--you'll need as much resolution as you can get.

Open the texture in PS, and adjust the contrast and brightness until you've got nice splotches and a mostly white background. Paste the grunge into your main doc and place it right above the ground. Set the blend mode to multiply, and it should turn into very nice yuck on the ground.

Since you have so much resolution in your battlemat, you may want to cut out an irregular border around your grunge so that it doesn't make a nice, neat square. Playing with different levels of saturation, contrast and brightness can give a single texture enough variation that you should be able to use it several times without it being obvious that you're reusing the same element. You can throw some grunge on the tents with the same technique. I'd recommend something from the Splatter category for that.

[RobA]

DeviantArt also has many grunge brushes for download.

Another thing is the ground itself. It still looks too "nice". I would think that the efforts of setting up the camp and fencing and dragging around stuff would have gouged and damaged the grass more than the slight wear shown.

A question might be - how long has the camp been there? How did the materials get brought in? Were any horses/wagons used? If so I'd expect to see ruts and clods all over the place.

Lastly, is the fire a cook-fire or a warmth fire? I would expect more around the camp, possibly with logs and things pulled up to sit on.

-Rob A>

[torstan]

You can also go to deviantart.com and search for grunge brush - there are loads over there.

For example here.

[JFJohnny5]

Thanks everyone! Those grunge brushes worked wonders. It feels much more polished now. Which is ironic since in this case, "polished" actually means dirty and grungy. I'm at work now, but I'll post the finished version tonight or tomorrow.

[jfrazierjr]

Very nice map!

Any chance of the updated version being posted, both with and without the grid (or just without would be great.

Joe

[torstan]

They were posted in the finished map section, here:

http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=1775

[jfrazierjr]

They were posted in the finished map section, here:

http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=1775

Thanks Torstan!