With all the discussion on isomorphic projections and city maps (here), I felt that I just had to draw one myself. Originally, there was a thread that inspired me to begin my own project, but I can't seem to find it. I wish I could remember the author of the thread, since that author provided a pattern for making isomorphic grids in photoshop. I am mainly drawing this in photoshop (CS 6 ), but I am also using Illustrator to make some of the objects. Here is a link to making iso projections in illustrator. It has proven to be very useful.

Anyhow, I have been working on this project for over a month now, and luckily I have saved progressions of my work so I can post them on Cartographers Guild.

Here is the basic plan and layout of the main city features included in the city. Although, I have changed some of these features as the project's progressed. For example, I originally planned to make a prison in the upper left corner, but felt that a grand bazaar or souk would fit the theme of the city better. I decided that I would draw just a section of the city, instead of the entire thing. This city is supposed to have over a population over a million. It is inspired from the Exalted rpg city, Chiaroscuro. I am intending to give it a southern Mediterranean feel to it.

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Next I made the basic shapes of the buildings and a few other features in an isomorphic projection.

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Then I started the long task of adding details to the shapes so that they would look like buildings, temples, bazaars, towers, walls, etc.

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Here is where I am currently at. I still have quite a bit more work to do. For example, I plan to add more details to the bazaar in the top left hand corner of the map. I also added little blob people to remind me of the scale when I am adding building features.

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This is where I am currently at on this project. I am hoping to finish it sometime soon. This is not a commission or anything like that, but more of a personal project to see if I can develop the skills to work on projects like this.

Any thoughts, criticisms, questions or comments would be highly appreciated. As I make more progress I will try and post regular updates.

Jamison