[Region 1][Map 13][Town 02] Ascension

[Midgardsormr]

It's been a while, but I've finally gotten back to working on this one. This is what I had when I got distracted by Mennin's Hallow:


I imported a low-res copy of that image into City Designer Pro and started in on it:



Once I had a layout that pleased me, I brought it back to Photoshop:



I need to go back and match the resolution of the CC3 output to my original Photoshop image so I can recomposite it properly (the scale sketch is particularly odious).

I still haven't quite arrived at a good way to render the cliff. Any other suggestions or comments? Questions?

[Midgardsormr]

I recomposited and cleaned things up a bit, and I tried out a hand-drawn hachure approach to the cliff. My next task will be to isolate the roads and houses, and recolor the houses so I can get all the roof shading going the same direction. City Designer didn't do a very good job with that.

I'm not sure how much I like the cliff at the moment. I think I'll wait until I've done a bit of work on the houses before I decide. Once again, advice is not only welcome, but coveted!

[Steel General]

I like it so far... maybe the shadowing on the buildings you mentioned will help make it look less flat.

[NeonKnight]

I hear your pain, it's one reason I am pining soooooo bad for CD3.

[torstan]

Looking good. Is there a reason for the river being green? I have to say I prefer a traditional blue

It might be nice to darken the river towards the southern cliff, as it is deeper there, and should also help to give more of a sense of height to the cliff at the same time.

[Midgardsormr]

Yeah, I haven't quite sold myself on the green, either. My initial idea was to try to make it look like the rivers I am used to, which are generally more brown than green, anyway. But if I made it brown, then it'd just look like more dirt. I'll probably go back to blue but keep the brown silt on the banks.

I did try to darken the water at the base of the cliff, but I don't think I did enough. I'll try that again tomorrow if I have time. There are a couple of other things I intend to tweak: shadows for the docks and boats, the castle walls, and the altar. Longer shadows for those 5-sided towers. Some farm fields and other vegetation.

While I was building the Mennin's Hallow map, it was suggested that I reverse the inset, so that the town take up the main map, and the inset have a regional mini-map. I think I'll try that out here.

Any thoughts on those hachure lines for the cliff? If they stay, they need to be cleaned up, but I'm still not sure if they're really showing what I want them to show.