Hill Castle

[- Max -]

Probably not. I'll just keep it greyscale I think. Partly down to laziness - I don't have to agonise over a suitable palette. =P

The style suits B&W (with grey shade) very well. I've actually jumped in the bandwagon and made a commisioned map for Wastburg RPG in this style and it works great for some inside books. Great job Larb! Do you plan to add the perspective view, that would make a nice composition !

[SteffenBrand]

This is insane! I'm blown away by the feedback and all the love this style suddenly gets and what this thread sparked. Thanks so much guys, you are awesome! =)
Your Hill Castle is really well done, Larb! Not really much I can critique here, probably only that you could try to hatch the corners a bit. I often to this, it helps to smoothen the transition between the walls and the space. I uploaded a pic to show you...



Keep up the inspiring work!
Best wishes, Steffen

[Domino44]

This is awesome! I love the style and the wall texture is really cool!

[Larb]

Thanks everyone.

I have tried your corner hatching idea on the next map I'm about to post. I have also gone with Max's suggestion of putting the building picture on this new map too. I haven't done that with the castle because I couldn't find a neat enough way to do it.

[arsheesh]

Ooh, very nice! Quite clean and sketchy. Great job.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Midgardsormr]

Since a reference popped up in another thread, I thought I'd come over here and offer a small suggestion: The lines and pattern of the walls is a bit darker and sharper than the rest of the line work. If it were lightened a little and blurred ever so slightly it would integrate better.

But now I need to go chase down Steffen's work and see if it also looks like that.

edit: Yep, it does. The contrast on his is closer to matching, but the line quality mismatch is the same. So fantastic work even matching the artifacts!

[Larb]

Well I'm not entirely sure how Steffan did his but basically the outside line for the walls/pattern is a layer style stroke which creates a solid black line and the rest is drawn using the pen tool (I use the Paint Tool SAI pen tool, I think Steffan uses the one native to photoshop).

Basically to do the walls I just draw in some solid black lines using the shapes or lines tool, select that layer, create a new pattern layer on top then fill that selection with the pattern and add a stroke using the layer styles.

[CaptainJohnHawk]

Fantastic work. Love this style. Makes my gears start turning for sure.

[Midgardsormr]

I like it, too. It reminds me of some of the structure maps for ICE's Middle Earth Roleplaying, which is where I got my start in gaming.