Thanks for the comments guys (not been around the past month). Good job with the barrels then Bogie Had no idea where I got them from as they went in my "Oooo, I bet I'll use them at some point!" folder a while back, so kudos!

@inzeos: This is actually one of the simplest maps I did. First I started by doing a little research on the rough shape and length of a caravel (went for a three masted) and then found a nice plank wood grain (probably google) and turned it into a tileable pattern. I cut out three shapes: long rectangle for the main deck, trapezoid shape for the aft deck (back of the ship) and and oval with the edges straightened off to make the bow (front part of the deck). With the bow and aft shapes on separate layers ABOVE the main deck layer, I could throw the pattern on all three layers and then do a drop down shadow on the aft and bow so they looked like they were above the deck.

From there I just threw on some items and did some drop down shadowing (normally I do shadows by hand but I made this pretty quickly), for the stairs it is a series of rectangles with the same distance/density of shadow on top of each other for each step, then putting the pattern on a layer over the top and doing a layer blend.

The whole thing sits on a parchment texture with a blue wash overlay for the ocean, and I think I probably flattened the entire ship and did a layer blend on that as well so it clung to the page a little more.

That's about as detailed a tutorial I can give really as it's a while back since I made it unfortunately