Cove City (Could use some advice on design)

[anomiecoalition]

Thanks for all the helpful tips - i've applied many of them...redid the docks (decided to add some boats...not sure if i'm gonna keep them yet)...redid the shoreline and added waves. Played around a bit with the settings for the houses, but thats gonna require more work still. Added farms, but I suspect that I over did it a bit and will probably have to trim it down some.

[Ilanthar]

I love the way you did the waters! Excellent work. I noticed that the piers are unnaturally connected to the land though, due to the shadowing (I think). I would correct this with a triangular based shadow on the land side (just by erasing some to get the proper feeling).

[Deadshade]

I quite agreed with Chick about the UFOs
But now your trees are first class. Really excellent - it's almost what I like most. You're doing that in PS ?

[anomiecoalition]

Thanks - for the next update, i'll try to address the dock shadow issue

Re: Trees - Yep - I use PS. I followed a tutorial on trees (can't find the link at the moment but its somewhere on these forums) but I really liked the overall effect. But given Chicks observation of how they appear zoomed in, I simply feathered them to blur those edges.

[anomiecoalition]

OK - new update. Fixed the dock shadows (I think), added some smaller roads in the outskirts and fixed the fields. Also replaced the important buildings with symbols (not sure if that was the right call or if I should replaced them with buildings I actually create with shapes on separate layers with different effects). Pretty happy with it, but would love to hear any comments, criticisms, or suggestions that would help me improve it. Particularly advice on the houses - I think they are better than before, but...



update - played some more with buildings.

[Ilanthar]

Well, I'm not sure to see the difference... But that's a minor point anyway (and may be only me...). Very nice work on the lands.

[Chick]

The trees definitely look a lot better

It appears to me that you have used a texture layer and then erased all of it except the city walls and buildings. That gives the walls a very strange look since there is a definite direction to the texture. At the very least, each wall seqment should have that texture aligned across it at the same angle to the wall itself.

The buildings seem to be the same texture and that gives them a very artificial look. You might try using a different texture (or if they are different, then more different) for the roofs. And then try to avoid the same problem with an obvious alignment to all the roofs even though the buildings are aligned variously.

I do like the overall style and coloring of this map, I think it is going to be very pretty when you finish!

[Farland]

Second about the bevel on and drop shadow on the piers. It makes them look odd. Also, the texture on the buildings takes away the impression that they are buildings. They just look like some odd natural feature. But I love the walls.

[anomiecoalition]

Thanks for the comments guys - Staples did a great job with the poster sized print and my friends loved it.

Yeah - I'm still not super happy with the buildings. I learned alot about city maps through this process - but this is an area where I need to learn/develop a new method. If anyone knows of any good tutorials, please send a link.