January 2015 Challenge: Whitetemple, The Great Capital of the West

[TK.]

Hello there, everyone!

So, I saw this challenge only yesterday and with my (quite) limited skills and time, not sure I can make something good, BUT... I like a competition! (Not that I believe I have any chance at all, with the aaaaamazing stuff I've seen, good job guys!)

Aaaaanyway, enough rambling...onto a description of my work:

I'm currently in the process of mapping my RPG fantasy scenario, Infis Multiverse, and I started with the global map for the main world where players normally start. (which is currently in the WIP section here ^_^ )

At the most populated continent, Gadash, there's Whitetemple...the greatest city in the West, home of thinkers and merchants.

The city was built by an "architect-engineer" of a magical-technological advanced race, so I tried blending traces of modern urban planning and street efficiency with old world, curved land-following streets and city development. Since he had access to magic and technology beyond the fantasy world level, I also purposely made some streets completely straight while some curved or with irregular shapes to represent that mashup.

The city design is broken into main squares, basically:

In the south - the Docks : The main road connecting with the "Wayfarer Union Trade Center" receives the majority of supplies, grains and all kinds of stuff from all over the world and it's here in the Docks that the big storehouses are placed. The big empty squares will be occupied by great silos and storehouses and I also tried leaving bigger roads to represent the kind of space caravans and big tranports woudl require to maneuver around.

Up from the Docks, a bit north - the Lower City : Here it's where all the workers, builders and alike from the Docks will have their homes due to proximity and prices. Daylife stuff will also be around here, with low-priced taverns, minor storehouses and particular shops to attend the neighborhood. The idea of the city planning here is to have set road blocks and inside them have a myriad of minor completely organic-driven roads and connection developed around the day-life needs. I'm trying to do each and all of them by hand, by it's extremely time consuming and I'm not sure it adds that much value to the overall map...

Moving further north we reach - the High Temple area : Here's where all the big shots, connected families and alike will have their homes. All types of stuff to serve this population will also find their way here: good shops, high class taverns, exclusive crafters... It's also here that we'll find the city park and at it's center, the city central piece and the reason of it's naming, the White Temple. (Which was made using a special stone from the Cupolla Mountains, resembling a very clear-white marble). A group of thinkers and philosophers, "The children of Aristotle", assemble here to discuss politics, philosophy and conspire

At the northern end of the city - The Law district : Here we'll have the city hall, the library, city archives and all that jazz.

Now, I only need to find more time to complete this before the time ends... tick tack!


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[Lingon]

Sounds like a pretty challenging background to work with, but I think it comes across in the map really well. Great job so far.

[Chick]

Wow, if you can do that city in 3 days, you're a whiz Good luck

[TK.]

Soo...I believe I'm somewhat finished on the roads/streets structure. Might still add something here and there, specially connecting to the storehouses/silos/houses/buildings and alike when they're in place.

This took waaay more time than I expected...but off we go!

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[TK.]

Working on the houses and buildings...not happy with them at all. Saw people do it with Bevel & Emboss, but I can't get it right for my taste

Also, the smaller roads and Lower City didn't leave much room for dropping buldings there, so I left it empty... since they're close to slums, I guess it's not THAT bad...


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[Wingshaw]

I've got a few comments for you TK:
--first, what era is this map, and what, if any, historic cultures/periods are you referencing? The grid-like layout and shape of the city look like Manhattan, and so gives the map an overall modern feel. Alternatively, parts of the map resemble Roman towns, but only a little. For a modern city map, I think you have done a very good job for the layout; for any other real-world historic era, there are some serious problems.
--second (and you probably won't want to hear this), those little streets look wrong. Sorry to sound so harsh, but there are some major problems with the scale, there. If you got rid of them (and they look like they must have taken forever to draw in the first place), your map would be vastly improved, in my opinion. As you have already pointed out, they are too small for you to place buildings in; the same logic says that in real life they would be too small to fit buildings in.
--third, are you going to add anything to the geography of this map? Is there a river or coastline nearby (again, the similarity to Manhattan is making me automatically see water surrounding the left, right and bottom of the page)? Are there hills or woodlands? A bit of extra information would help to make sense of your layout: for example, it could explain why there is an empty space going through the middle of the city, with only one road joining the two halves.
--fourth, and this might be a personal preference, but I'd also recommend getting rid of the yellowish cloud on the background grass. The patchy effect can be done well, but it should look more subtle than that. The best way to do it, I think, is to paint in patches of yellower grass by hand (or by mouse or stylus, as the case may be).
--fifth, the bevelled buildings. You are right: they aren't working at the moment. Question: do you really want the bevelled look? Again, this is a personal opinion, but frankly I've never liked the bevel effect for doing buildings. A better approach--especially if this is a modern or post-Industrial city--is to simply fill the blocks and then give them perhaps a stroke, some hatching, maybe a bit of a glow or shadow.

I've taken the liberty of editing your second previous image with some of the changes I'm suggesting: see what you think. If it isn't the look you want, no problem; just say so, and I'll try and help you get what you are looking for. By the way, is there any particular city map style that you are trying to imitate? What maps have inspired this one?

By the way, I wrote all of the above before reading your first post where you describe the city and its setting.

THW

[TK.]

THW

- This city is settled in a high fantasy setting (where the normal cities are somewhat Roman-like). The deal with it, though, is that after a while of the city developing normallyl, an engineer of a highly tech advanced civilization took the city planning and building and started using his advanced knowledge (and magik!) to continue the city growth forward.
What I tried to do was make the first areas of the city (Docks and High Temple area) more Roman-ish-like while the other areas more modern like...

- The small streets....well, that area is really a big slum, with "housings" starting at 2X2m... so you have an idea of what that area would look like (obviously in a more old fantasy look), so you can see how contrived it can be, even on the real world.




- geography...yeah, I intend to add terrain to it. The area doesn't have any water close by, as you can see on my world map on the WIP thread you replied before, but certainly there's higher/lower grounds to add and some rocky areas....that middle gap is an area that I want to add rocks and higher ground, for example.

- Bevel...I went for the bevelled effect since that's what I've seen used for fantasy maps. While the city design has this very specific setup I explained, it's still fantasy, so I tried to stick to the "Norm" and keep the fantasy feeling with the bevel, but I guess I need more practice (a lot more) to make it work.

[- Max -]

If you can't draw individual buildings when an area should have it then it's a scale issue and you would have buildings blocks instead. ANd like THW, I'm not fond of bevelled buildings. In my opinion, it's too digital to scream fantasy. But anyway your map layout makes me think rather of a very modern city than anything else.

[Wingshaw]

Alright, TK., let's see what we can do, here.

First, I need to say that there are serious problems with your city layout. Fantasy cities need to remain logical, above all else, and there are some major issues wih this city, in that regard. If you continue working onthismap after the challenge, and want further advice about urban form and layout (from a professional urban planner, and archaeokogist, and an amateur urban historian) I'd be happy to help.

In the meantime, though, with a fast approaching deadline, here are my top suggestions:
--Create a layer and name it buildings.
--Select the spaces contained by your roads - I.E. each individual city block.
--Fill with white (100% opacity).
--Apply the following layer styles:
------Bevel emboss > inner bevel > hard edges, and then play around with the settings to your liking.
------Colour overlay, set the colour to 100% opacity, possibly multiply. Choose a colour that represents the building material of the city roofs. If this is a Roman-style city, for example, a terracotta colour to resemble tiles would be good.
------Apply a drop shadow, and set the options to your liking
------Apply a thin black Stroke if you want
--Using a fine eraser tool (1pixel would be fine) erase lines in your buildings layer. The bevel will automatically update to reflect the erasures, and you can quickly see how to make your city look better
--If there is a part of the city that has different roofs (eg the slums, where construction materials are likely to be anything available (wood, tiles, cloth, etc); a rich district which might have, say, metal plates, slate tiles, marble, etc), repeat the above steps but choose a different colour on the colour overlay step.

I think the above steps will make your bevelled buildings work a bit better. As for the buildings on the outside part of the city, one way you could try and do them is to use the lasso tool to select polygonal shapes, and then, on the buildings layer, fill with white.

Like I mentioned before, adopting the bevel technique probably won't do you many favours in the long run, but since this challenge is ending soon, hopefully the above instructions will be able to make yor map look better. I think it is also important to include terrain and labelling buildings before it is too late.

Good luck.

THW

[TK.]

THW and Max, before anything else, thanks for the input!

I certainly will need more time on this map to get it right, but I thought the challenge was a fun option to test stuff.

What you guys suggest for buildings in a more fantasy-like city map?

I was tinkering with the map before seeing your suggestions and I changed some stuff around, so I'll look into your settings and see how it turns out when I get some time...hopefully before the timeline.

Here's what I got

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