WIP: Birdseye

[Wingshaw]

Allow me to present my latest mapping project (my previous one, on indefinite standby, has not been forgotten - I will finish it. Promise.).

This is the Moste Beautifulle and Grete Citye of Birdseye. It is perched atop a pinnacle of rock, overlooking the sea. It was originally founded as a lookout, due to the dangers to shipping of a monster that lived in the nearby waters, but it eventually became a bandit stronghold, and then a town. An enormous stone bridge was constructed at a later date, to link the city to the mainland, and many houses have now been constructed even on the bridge's surface. There's a lot more to the history, which I won't go into right now.

When drawing this city, I wanted the buildings on the rock to resemble an Italian hill town, and those on the bridge to be more in the pattern of northern European (Dutch, English) settlements (i.e. long narrow plots with the house at the front and sometimes a shed at the back). There's also a cluster of buildings that are inspired by Islamic houses, which I started adding but then decided didn't look right. They're near the Bridge. I did a lot of research to try and get the look and feel right for this city, and hopefully I succeeded in some areas. Strangely, there's just not that much information around on medieval Italian cities. You don't know of any good websites, do you?

I've included the finished hand-drawn part of the map, as well as a rough contour map for the rock. I still want to polish it up a bit, perhaps redo some areas, and I have ambitious plans to make a 3d model in SketchUp, but that'll probably never happen.

I'd really like to hear people's comments and critiques.

Oh, and this is not a map by Larithas Stone, and so does not belong to the Dispatches series; this was, however, created by Stone's teacher at the CG (and a bit of a hero of Stone, it must be said), Titus Wolfgang.

-TheHoarseWhisperer