hand drawn / ps trading village

[Jaxilon]

Actually, I don't think it's bad at all. It has a very architectural style that I tend to like.

What are you shooting for and maybe we can provide some help. Do you have any examples of some town maps that have something you want?

[Larb]

You might be getting the "crayon" impression because of all the white showing through (as you are using a low opacity brush). You could try fiddling with the background or parts of it. Perhaps adjust the white slightly to a warmer colour or a subtle green. Or even try a paper type background.

You could also try throwing down a texture on top (something I do) - a paper or rust or whatever texture on top of everything on a separate layer set to 10% overlay or thereabouts.

[Ramah]

You might be getting the "crayon" impression because of all the white showing through (as you are using a low opacity brush). You could try fiddling with the background or parts of it. Perhaps adjust the white slightly to a warmer colour or a subtle green. Or even try a paper type background.

You could also try throwing down a texture on top (something I do) - a paper or rust or whatever texture on top of everything on a separate layer set to 10% overlay or thereabouts.

This.

Adding a subtle texture will make a lot of difference to how it looks.

Not that it needs it though. I think it looks great.

[feanaaro]

I find it beautiful, and I think that it would be an extremely rare child the one able to do something like this in a kindergarden!

[Vellum]

Jaxilon – Here are a couple of links to stuff I like, this is more or less elements of the style (though I like the styles selected) I like your water style in the cano exp I think overall I like the subtle understated styles the best, that have the handdrawn/digital combo. But then again I happen to like a variety of the maps I see here. That’s really a hard one to answer.
Torstan’s Midguard http://www.cartographersguild.com/at...wastedwest.jpg The forest area textures and the light “desert” areas

Arsheesh Picture 12 of 13 from My Completed Maps

Schwarzkreuzs’ background textures http://www.cartographersguild.com/at...on-hughes9.jpg

Larb I’ll give the background fiddling a shot, once I figure out / select a good texture pattern. I’ll be looking at your tutorial as I’m using CS3 also http://www.cartographersguild.com/tu...-tutorial.html Hopefully this may enhance my PS skills, thanks

Ramah I like your grassland style in http://www.cartographersguild.com/re...tml#post202178. It seems you also used a “blotched parchment” background layer?

I'll be slack for a bit here RL is getting in the way LOL, not much of an update, I've been working on the forested areas and road a bit more but not much. Afterthought here on the maps selected, these all seem to be regional / world maps so I'll have to consider the scale of the elements compared to my village. Thanks for the input guys.

[Jaxilon]

I think you will find some happiness by just putting a parchment layer under this. It'll add some depth and texture to your coloring and you can tweak from there. Looking forward to seeing it.

[Technospiritualist]

I think this is a fine map. I'm sure you PS people can offer some improvements, but please keep the "hand drawn" feel. As a long-time game master and now author, I feel many of todays maps are too polished. Just like I don't like my music over polished, maps that have a "look what I found in grandpa's dresser drawer" feel seem somehow more authentic and more real. It feels like somebody who lives in that town took the time to draw a map of his town. I really like it, and thanks for posting it!

[Vellum]

Small tweeks update, now that I see this online it looks to subtle. Whatcha all think? worked on the treeline some, road edges some, cleaned up color overlay on building to make them pop out a bit more. Still haven't worked on the parchment layer, was trying to update what I had before I screwed around LOL. Well everything is screwing around!! Whew this is hard work

[arsheesh]

Oooh, that's looking nice Vellum.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Vellum]

Well it looks like this may be finished for now i accidentally converted the psd into last night's jpeg post!!! I've got the day previous save file, but this kinda knocked the wind outta me, had more than a couple of hours change in it yesterday, worked the day on an off. Good lesson to pay attention to the save function and not do it automatically LOL. I guess my choices are to try and recreate layer system from this point or drop back and rework stuff. I think I'll step away from it for a bit and maybe get through the holidays then jump back on it.